Harvey Weinstein’s ‘greedy’ move against Robin Williams

The producer of Good Will Hunting has revealed for the first time the shocking lengths Harvey Weinstein went to in a bid to mess with Robin Williams’ career.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s smash feature film Good Will Hunting is proof that a small project can turn out big results.

The 1997 Gus Van Sant-directed drama earned over $US225 million ($A300 million) at the box office and won two Oscars.

However, there seemed to have been some drama that erupted after filming wrapped.

Mallrats filmmaker (and Good Will Hunting co-executive producer) Kevin Smith claims that disgraced Miramax founder Harvey Weinstein wanted to pull the indie film from theatre screens early in an attempt to mess with star Robin Williams’ career.

Robin Williams and Matt Damon in a scene from the 1997 film.

In Smith’s new book, Kevin Smith’s Secret Stash, the 51-year-old revealed that Williams had a back-end deal that said if the drama grossed over $US100 million ($A133 million), Williams would take a larger portion of the profits and split that money with Miramax. In an interview with the Daily Beast, the director said he’s “not sure if it was a 50/50 split”.

He said: “I remember when Good Will Hunting was leaving theatres and it felt weird because it was like, ‘Wait? There’s all this Oscar buzz, so why would you pull it if it was just making money?’ And they did it because keeping it in theatres meant that more of the money would go to Robin, whereas the moment it went to video, the split wasn’t Robin-heavy. It was hamstrung because [of] greed.”

Disgraced ex-movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

Several of Smith’s cult films such as Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jersey Girl and Dogma were produced by Weinstein and Miramax. Affleck, 49, and Damon, 51, starred in some of these movies.

Good Will Hunting was made on a tiny budget of $US10 million ($A13 million). The film scored nine Academy Award nominations, and Affleck and Damon won for Best Screenplay, while Williams won for Best Supporting Actor.

Another golden nugget from Smith’s book is that he coined the now-infamous name “Bennifer”. The moniker was given to Affleck and girlfriend Jennifer Lopez in the early aughts.

Lopez, 52, and the Argo actor starred in Smith’s 2004 comedy Jersey Girl as a young couple. He gave the lovebirds the portmanteau on the set of the box office bomb.

“Dubious honour! A dubious honour at best, man,” Smith told the outlet. “Most people out there, including Ben and Jen themselves, are like, ‘Thanks, a***hole.’ ”

Despite dating from 2002 until breaking up in 2004, Bennifer is now back together.

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Harvey Weinstein’s ‘greedy’ move against Robin Williams