Hollywood big shot jumps fence to television

MOVIE mogul Harvey Weinstein is shifting his sights away from the big screen and towards the small one in your living room.

MERYL Streep has called him God. Vanity Fair says he is Hollywood's last true impresario. Now movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is shifting his sights away from the big screen and towards the small one in your living room.

Weinstein, who cancelled a 24-hour stopover in Canberra last weekend for the Body of Work festival, has amassed a $US150 million ($165m) war chest to try to replicate his cinematic success (The King's Speech and Shakespeare in Love) in the world of high-quality television drama.

"We're living in a golden age of television," he says, a reference to how programs such as The Sopranos and Mad Men have ended the days when "made for TV" was perhaps the most damning phrase in show business.

The Weinstein Company, which he runs with his brother, Bob, intends to add to this period of excellence.

"We have access to the greatest talent in the world," he says.

This is not a hollow boast, as his connections run the A-list gamut, from Colin Firth and Quentin Tarantino to Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow -- all of whom won Oscars under Weinstein's wing.

Among the most intriguing of his planned TV projects is a detective drama that will be set in ancient Egypt and called Book of the Dead. Weinstein suggests it will echo the tone of Game of Thrones, the hit fantasy drama.

"It's going to be great. It's going to be very, very, very, sexy. Too sexy for you and me . . . our Nefertiti is going to be amazing," he says.

Another series, Ten Commandments, will use the Bible as a source. If all goes according to plan, a flock of feted film directors, such as Lee Daniels, who made The Butler, and Wes Craven, best known for A Nightmare on Elm Street, will each oversee an episode based on an Old Testament law. It also has been suggested that Madonna may direct.

Also in the works is an adaptation of War and Peace, to be made with the BBC. The corporation will be involved with a series based on the lives of comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Weinstein believes that TV offers the promise of more stable revenue streams than the film industry, where hits can be sporadic and earnings uneven.

It also offers him, in the role of executive producer, greater creative control.

"Television is a writers' and a producers' medium," he says. "In film, the director holds the power. In television (where several directors are likely to work on a single series) it's much more the executive producer."

In 1979 he and his brother founded Miramax Films and transformed the face of independent film-making.

Their triumphs included Sex, Lies and Videotape, Pulp Fiction, My Left Foot and Good Will Hunting. In an 11-year stretch they bagged 13 best picture Oscar nominations.

Disney bought Miramax in 1993. The brothers continued to run it until 2005, when they left, acrimoniously, and founded the Weinstein Company.

The new company made a rocky start but has since rebounded. In 2010, for instance, Weinstein backed The King's Speech. It cost $US15m to make. It grossed dollars $US386m at the box office and won four Oscars, including best picture.

Such successes -- and a British wife -- have made Weinstein something of an Anglophile.

And he says that Britain will play a pivotal role in his TV battle plan. For a start, he has bought the rights to Peaky Blinders, the gangster drama set in Birmingham, which he believes can be a hit in the US.

THE TIMES