Campion Calls Weinstein's 'Piano' Campaign 'Brilliant'
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- Jane Campion, presiding over the jury at this year's Taormina Film Festival alongside star Holly Hunter, told Variety in Sicily that Harvey Weinstein — despite "horrific things" — ran a "brilliant" marketing campaign for "The Piano," calling the strategy "his vision."
- Weinstein and Miramax acquired the rights to "The Piano" early in 1993 and ran an aggressive awards campaign that helped the film gross $140.2 million worldwide on a $7 million budget and win three Academy Awards, including best original screenplay for Campion.
- Sony Pictures Classics will release a 4K restoration of "The Piano," overseen by Campion and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, in U.S. theaters on July 24.
- Campion said she sees "a really big price to pay for the #MeToo movement," citing "abortion being withdrawn in America" and patriarchy "stretching back their ground," but added that women filmmakers now have more economic power and opportunities that "are not going away."
- Campion credited Ciby 2000 — a French production and distribution company founded in 1990 by former roadmaker Francis Bouygues — with giving her creative freedom on "The Piano" via a generous 50/50 profit split.
- Campion is currently working on a musical (details undisclosed) and running a Wellington-based pop-up film school called A Wave in the Ocean, partially funded by Netflix.
Why it matters: Campion, an Oscar winner whose work sits squarely in the arthouse tradition post-#MeToo, is one of the most prominent filmmakers to publicly disentangle Weinstein's marketing competence from his crimes — a nuanced position that complicates the dominant narrative of total disavowal. The 4K re-release, timed to the film's 30th anniversary, gives Sony Pictures Classics a fresh commercial vehicle while reopening the conversation about who actually built "The Piano" into a $140 million hit.
