Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California. It was initially a leading producer and distributor of independent films until it became the first company to be acquired by The Walt Disney Company on June 30, 1993. In 2010, the leadership of Disney saw Miramax to be redundant in their directions and on December 3 sold it to Filmyard Holdings, a joint venture of Colony NorthStar, Tutor-Saliba Corporation, and Qatar Investment Authority. On March 2, 2016, the company was in turn sold to the beIN Media Group, who then agreed to sell a 49% stake in the company to ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global) on December 20, 2019. It was completed on April 3, 2020, and its stake in Miramax was placed under the umbrella of its film division, Paramount Pictures. History Independent era (1979–1993) The company was founded by the Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, along with executive Corky Burger in Buffalo, New York, in 1979, and was named by combining the first names of their parents, Miriam and Max. It was created to distribute independent films deemed commercially unfeasible by the major studios. The company's first major success came when the Weinsteins teamed up with British producer Martin Lewis and acquired the U.S. rights to two concert films Lewis had produced of benefit shows for human rights organization Amnesty International. The Weinsteins worked with Lewis to distill the two films into one film for the American marketplace. The resulting film, the American version of The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, was a successful release for Miramax in the summer of 1982. This release presaged a modus operandi that the company would undertake later in the 1980s of acquiring films from international filmmakers and reworking them to suit American sensibilities and audiences. In its early years, Miramax had to focus primarily as a catalyst for music and decided to do a licensing agreement with Thorn EMI Video, in order to release several of Miramax's early films. Among the company's other breakthrough films as distributors in the late 1980s and early 1990s were Pulp Fiction, Scandal, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, The Crying Game, and Clerks. The company also made films such as Flirting with Disaster, Heavenly Creatures, and Shakespeare in Love.