What is Bob Weinstein's Net Worth?
Bob Weinstein is an American film producer who has a net worth of $200 million. Bob Weinstein is the founder of Dimension Films and co-founder of The Weinstein Company, along with his disgraced brother Harvey Weinstein. Together, they owned a combined 42% of the company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Previously, Harvey and Bob Weinstein were the co-chairmans of Miramax Films. Bob and Harvey produced rock concerts after graduating from college and then moved on to movies. Bob Weinstein has almost 300 production credits to his name including movies and TV series such as True Romance, Clerks, Pulp Fiction, The Crossing Guard, The English Patient, Scream, The Faculty, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Good Will Hunting, Jackie Brown, Shakespeare in Love, The Cider House Rules, She's All That, Scary Movie, The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Kate & Leopold, Serendipity, Chicago, Gangs of New York, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2, The Aviator, Fahrenheit 9/11, Finding Neverland, Sin City, Clerks 2, Halloween, Inglourious Basterds, Apollo 18, and Piranha 3DD. Weinstein has been nominated for 12 Primetime Emmy Awards. While operating The Weinstein Company, the brothers produced The Imitation Game. The Butler, Inglorious Basterds, Silver Linings Playbook, and Django Unchained, to name a few. In 2017, Harvey Weinstein was forced to respond to numerous sexual harassment claims lodged by women such as Ashley Judd dating back 20 years. On October 9, 2017, Harvey was fired by the board of directors of The Weinstein Company. In March 2020, Harvey was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Early Life
Bob Weinstein was born on October 18, 1954 in Flushing, Queens, New York. He was raised in a lower-middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family by parents Max and Miriam Weinstein. His father worked as a diamond cutter. He grew up with his older brother, Harvey Weinstein. The family lived in a housing co-op called Electchester. He attended John Bowne High School. He then enrolled at the State University of New York at Fredonia, though he did not often attend, rather enjoying listening to music and watching films.
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Concert Career
While still in college, Weinstein became interested in joining his older brother, Harvey, in a production company Harvey had launched with a friend, Corky Burger, called Harvey & Corky Productions. Weinstein ultimately decided to drop out of college in the early 1970s and moved to Buffalo, New York, where Harvey was enrolled at the University of Buffalo.
The brothers and Corky originally focused their business on arranging and planning concerts at Century Theater. They would bring in well-known artists like the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, and Stephen Stills. However, planning concerts did not prove to be very profitable, so they decided to begin screening films at the theater as well.
Miramax
Using their profits from the company, the brothers decided to create a small independent film distribution company, Miramax. They named the company after their parents, Miriam and Max. They focused on releasing independent films that other distribution companies had turned down for fear that they wouldn't be commercially successful. The company's first releases were primarily music-oriented concert films like "Rockshow," featuring Paul McCartney. In the 1980s, Miramax acquired the rights to two films that had been filmed in Britain for the human rights organization Amnesty International. Miramax edited the two original films into one movie, "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball," which was released in 1982 and became Miramax's first hit.
The brothers built on this success over the next decade, releasing a number of critically acclaimed arthouse films that were moderate commercial success. They released the documentary "The Thin Blue Line" in 1988, which told the story of a wrongfully convicted inmate sentenced to death row. The publicity that came from the movie ultimately resulted in the inmate's release and helped increase Miramax's profile in the media. The next year, they released "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," by Steven Soderbergh, which made Miramax the most successful independent studio in America.
In 1993, Disney offered the brothers $80 million for ownership of Miramax. They agreed to the deal and also were able to remain the heads of the company. The next year, they released their first blockbuster film, Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." In 1996, they released "The English Patient," which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In the years that followed, they released other critical successes like "Shakespeare in Love" and "Good Will Hunting."
The Weinstein Company
In 2005, the Weinstein brothers announced that they would be leaving Miramax to start their own production company. They called the resulting company The Weinstein Company. The company was very successful over the next decade and a half, releasing many critically and commercially successful films. Some of these films include "The King's Speech," "Inglourious Basterds," "Silver Linings Playbook," "The Imitation Game," "Halloween," "1408," and Paddington," to name a few. However, after a very successful run, the company had to file for bankruptcy in 2018 following the sexual harassment and abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein in 2017.
In December of 2017, Bob Weinstein filed a trademark application for Watch This Entertainment. He spent the next two years developing an idea for a new production company. He announced that the company would focus on family films, comedies, and upscale adult thrillers. The first project released under the company was the animated feature film "Endangered."
Personal Life
Bob Weinstein married Anne Clayton, a book editor, in 2000. They lived in a luxury apartment on the Upper West Side of New York and had two daughters together – Sara and Nicole. In 2012, Anne filed for divorce from Weinstein and also sought a protective order as she stated that she feared he may physically harm her. Weinstein alleged that his wife was actually reacting badly to an intervention the family had staged in order to address Anne's struggle with alcoholism. Anne subsequently denied that she had a problem with alcohol and maintained that Weinstein had concocted the story.
In October 2017, multiple women accused Weinstein's brother, Harvey, of sexual harassment and assault. Bob Weinstein issued a statement that he was disgusted by the actions of his brother and denied having any knowledge of the allegations. He also distanced himself from his brother, saying the two had not had much contact in the five preceding years. Around the same time, Bob Weinstein was also accused of sexual harassment by Amanda Segel, a woman who had worked as a showrunner on the Weinstein Company-produced miniseries, "The Mist." She alleged that Weinstein had made unwanted sexual advances towards her for a period of three months in 2016. Weinstein issued a statement denying the allegations, and no charges were ever filed.
