Entertainment Business - Research Paper Example

Entertainment Business The purpose of this paper is to provide critical research on an entertainment business as a means of demonstrating proper business research, the breadth of the entertainment industry, and gain critical understanding of the entrepreneurial roles. The format that this paper will utilize is to identify all of the the major learning objectives and then provide a critical discussion of the issue. For the purpose of this paper, the company to be analyzed will be Miramax films which self identifies as an American entertainment company that specializes in producing and distributing both independent as well as foreign films.

The founders of the company are the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein. The name of the company is a portmanteau of the founders parents first names (Miriam and Max). The company was founded in 1979 since that time has gone on to play a leading role in championing both critically acclaimed and financially successful films. In regards to what role the founders of the company played s difficult to fully identify. Both Bob and Harvey Weinstein careers have taken on many roles in the entertainment industry including, executive production, directing, producing and even writing.

However, the partners role with Miramax has tended to focus on executive production. In regards to the reasoning behind why the brothers founded the company is largely owing to the pair recognizing that there was a niche market that was being overlooked by the major movie studios. The pair were exposed to a number of great films that were completely overlooked because they were deemed to be financially unfeasible to produce, or other companies did not have the resources to effectively market these films.

The company Miramax, since its inception has capitalized on producing these speciality films and finding proper channels for them. Although the goal of the company is to turn a profit through capitalizing on this niche market, there is always an artistic element to their business process insofar as the pair tended to proceed with films that they felt were artistically or culturally significant. One could make the argument that this company started on the basis of innovation. As the company did not need to rewrite the book on film production, they simply noticed that there were an abundance of films that were being neglected by major studios and that Miramax might be an effective channel to ensure widespread success.

Both Bob and Harvey Weinstein had arguably had a number of successes and failures in their careers. For example the pair produced major films such as Phantoms which was arguably a critical failure and fared poorly at the box office. A second example is the film Scary Movie 4 which generated significant financial results for the company but was critically panned. The pair have produced films such as Four Rooms which broke even financially and was modestly received by film critics. On the other end of the spectrum, the pair produced the film My Left Foot which was extremely well received critically and generated significant returns.

The lesson learned from this experience is that the company simply soldiered on, and to not let any sort of failures hold them back, to ensure that they simply produce films that they feel are significant. I believe that this company will be successful insofar as they have such a storied history, their leaders are uncompromising in their attempt to produce films, they have been able to shrug off numerous failures and capitalized on their many successes. The company just partnered with Focus features to release the film The Debt which thus far has proven to be both financially and critically successful.