“My movie about angels is owned by the devil himself.” That’s Kevin Smith speaking about his film Dogma and its horrible connections to Harvey Weinstein.
In a recent interview with The Wrap, the filmmaker opened up about why Dogma is so hard to find. You can not find Dogma on any streaming service, for those unaware, and it has been long out of print for home video release. The film is a production of Miramax, which the monstrous Harvey Weinstein once owned.
The film was released theatrically by Lionsgate domestically, Miramax internationally, and Columbia/TriStar had the home video rights for a limited time, but those rights subsequently lapsed. The rights were then reportedly owned by Harvey Weinstein.
It wasn’t until 2017 that Smith says he received a call from Harvey Weinstein “out of the blue” about a potential Dogma sequel or TV series. Ironically, the call came just one week before The New York Times published its exposé about the assault and rape allegations against Weinstein. The conversations about a new Dogma weren’t the only things on Weinstein’s mind. Smith claims that John Gordon allegedly said Weinstein “called everyone because he knew the story was coming, and he wanted to find out who spoke [to the Times].'”
Smith says to The Wrap: “I was like, ‘That makes perfect sense.’ I’m guileless; I don’t see all the angles. He was calling not because he wanted to do anything with Dogma. He wanted to see if I was one of the people who had spoken to the New York Times. I hadn’t because I didn’t know any of that stuff.”
It wouldn’t be until years later Smith learned that Weinstein was trying to sell the rights for $5 million. Smith claims that the mogul reportedly “scoffed” at an offer by Smith and his lawyers to buy it back. He adds, “He’s holding it hostage. My movie about angels is owned by the devil himself. And if there’s only one way out of this, maybe we could buy it away.”
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Now, the rights to Dogma belong to a new company, but Smith suspects that Weinstein still has his fingers all in this drama. Smith believes they “changed the company’s name and maybe sold it to a different shell company,” adding that: “my movie about heaven is in limbo.”
