Well this is… odd. According to a press release that was sent out earlier this morning, The Weinstein Company and Miramax Films are launching a new partnership that will allow them to create sequels to a whole slew of popular films from the Miramax catalog. The first movies that are currently slated to get sequels include Bad Santa, Rounders and Shakespeare in Love, while the following titles may also get sequels and/or television spin-offs: Bridget Jones’s Diary, Copland, From Dusk Till Dawn, Swingers, Clerks, Shall We Dance, and The Amityville Horror. We had heard rumours about sequels to a few of these films already, but this deal is sounding dangerously similar to Warner Premiere, the direct-to-video arm of Warner Home Video that has churned out stuff like Lost Boys: The Tribe. There’s no mention of them actually being DTV releases, but I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that some of these will end up being shameless cash grabs either way.

Harvey and Bob Weinstein created Miramax back in the late ’70s and ran the studio until they left it in 2005. Earlier this year, Disney closed down Miramax and put it up for sale, and for a while it was rumoured that The Weinsteins were going to buy it back, but in the end it was sold to a company called Filmyard Holdings instead. Clearly The Weinsteins are close to some of these movies, and you’d think that they would treat them with a certain amount of respect. But they are also businessmen, and The Weinstein Company has been in need of some commercial hits for a while now.

New Bad Santa and Rounders movies have been talked about previously, and if done right, I think they could be somewhat promising. From Dusk Till Dawn has also had a couple of DTV sequels already, so no real harm there. But I think the most surprising thing is the mention of Swingers and Clerks on that list. It’s unclear if these would be movie sequels or TV adaptations, and also whether or not Jon Favreau and Kevin Smith would be involved. I suspect that they will not, but for now, all we can do is wait and see. What do you think, is this good news, and do you actually want to see any of the aforementioned sequels?