Weinsteins ink Italian pay TV deal

The Weinstein Company has cut a pay TV deal with Italian pay TV platform Sky Italia. The deal gives the Italian company exclusive pay TV rights to Weinstein and Dimension Films’ titles including Bobby, The Nanny Diaries and Michael Moore’s healthcare factual feature film SiCKO.

At last count News Corp.-backed Sky Italia, Italy’s only satellite pay TV platform, had 4.5 million subscribers.

The Weinstein Company has been busy cutting movie deals with pay TV operators recently. As well as Sky Italia it has deals with pan-Asian pay TV company Star and Canal+ in France. In free-to-air TV it has agreed deals with German public broadcaster ARD and and its Italian counterpart RAI.

In its domestic market The Weinstein Company announced a long term deal with Showtime earlier this week. That seven-year agreement reportedly included an advance bonus of $100 million paid to Showtime ahead of the cable network then paying the distributor, on a performance-related basis, for its features.