Doctorow Leaves MGM for Miramax

3 Mar, 2011 By: Erik Gruenwedel

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Veteran home entertainment industry executive Eric Doctorow has reportedly left his job as GM of MGM Home Entertainment and has taken on a new assignment at Miramax, according to industry sources. There has been no official announcement, but Doctorow reportedly will be one of the boutique studio’s key executives overseeing home entertainment, among other areas.

Doctorow is the longest-serving studio chief in the home entertainment market. He became president of worldwide video for Paramount Pictures in 1994 and has held subsequent senior executive positions throughout the industry thereafter. He had been at MGM for three years.

Harvey and Bob Weinstein founded Miramax in 1979, which features a catalog of more than 700 films, including Oscar-winning titles The English Patient, The Queen and Good Will Hunting. They sold it to Disney in 1993 for $80 million. Disney sold it last year to an investment group for $660 million.

In recent months, Miramax has engaged in a distribution-frenzy, inking physical, theatrical and digital rights agreements with myriad players, including The Weinstein Co. That deal calls for the two companies to co-op sequels to Clerks, From Dusk Till Dawn, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Copland, Shall We Dance, Swingers and The Amityville Horror, among others. The agreement, which also includes developing new bonus material for catalog Blu-ray Disc releases, expands on a pact that features sequels Scream 4, Spy Kids 4 and Scary Movie 5 in the pipeline.

Last month, Miramax signed separate catalog home entertainment distribution deals with Lionsgate and Echo Bridge Entertainment. And March 1, Miramax expanded a long-running agreement to distribute home entertainment and theatrical content in Canada through Alliance Films.

MGM emerged last December from bankruptcy as a new company co-headed by former minority stakeholders Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum. Throughout 2010, the famed studio entertained serious merger overtures from Lionsgate and investor Carl Icahn — the former eying its vaunted film catalog for physical, digital and pay-TV distribution.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, which distributes MGM titles, March 2 upgraded catalog titles offered through its manufacturing-on-demand DVD program with the addition of 20 new films ranging from 1952’s thriller The Captive City to 1990’s Buried Alive.
 

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