WEINSTEIN CLAIMS TWC IS OUT FROM UNDER STAGGERING DEBT

Harvey Weinstein has told TheWrap.com that famed Wall Street attorney H. Rodgin Cohen has engineered a deal that virtually frees The Weinstein Co. from its $450-million debt and with a new operating facility that “gives us the wherewithal to continue.” Under the deal, Ambac Financial Group will pay Goldman Sachs and Assured Guaranty $115 million of the debt and would be released from insuring TWC’s debt; the remainder will be exchanged for a library of 200 TWC movies including $233 million that those films are expected to earn over the next four and a half years. (The Wall Street Journal said that they will also receive a “small portion” of future films, including the upcoming Piranha 3-D.) The deal frees The Weinstein Co. from further interest payments on its debt. “Rodge Cohen has architected the perfect deal — four companies perfectly aligned,” Weinstein told TheWrap.com. (The deal would seem to mark Cohen’s first foray into Hollywood deal-making. Described once by the Wall Street Journal as “arguably the country’s leading banking lawyer,” Cohen was reportedly being considered by the Obama administration to become Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, until he withdrew his name from consideration.) On her Deadline Hollywood website industry blogger Nikki Finke railed against Weinstein’s claim, calling it merely “phony baloney spin.” “I’m sick of this company’s claims,” she wrote. “Almost everybody who trusts The Weinstein Co. lives to regret it, especially the moviemakers who believe Harv’s big promises and then wonder why their pics are dumped straight to video or never released theatrically or worse.”