HAVE THE WEINSTEINS BOUGHT BACK MIRAMAX?

Conflicting reports about the sale of the Walt Disney Co.’s defunct Miramax unit popped up on numerous entertainment-related websites on Thursday, initiated by a Hollywood Reporter “exclusive” maintaining that Bob and Harvey Weinstein had won the bidding to take back the company that they founded and later sold to Disney. “No word yet on when an official announcement of the deal will be made, as Disney lawyers apparently were still going over the financial details provided by the Weinsteins on Thursday,” the trade publication said. Shortly after the item appeared on the THR website, Sharon Waxman reported on her TheWrap.com website that the Weinsteins had negotiated a so-called window of opportunity — believed to be two days — to negotiate exclusively with Disney. Waxman quoted a source close to the negotiations as denying the THR story and insisting, “There is no deal with the Weinsteins … but it might happen in the next day or two.” Waxman’s report was followed by one by rival Nikki Finke, who quoted a Disney source as saying: “No [Miramax] deal done and reports to the contrary are false.” She added an update later quoting sources as saying that the Weinsteins and their backers, including Ron Burkle and Fortress and Colbeck Capital, were only now meeting to consider sweetening their bid to $615 million. About an hour later, she issued an update to her report calling Waxman’s story “wrong,” then remarking in a parenthetical aside, “Then again, that little-trafficked website is notoriously inaccurate.”