‘Sin City’ Creator Frank Miller Regains TV Series Rights From Weinstein Company

The wake of Harvey Weinstein’s accusations of sexual assault and rape — as well as his eventual arrest for those accusations — opened pandora’s box for a flood of similar accusations to befall Hollywood power players, filmmakers, and actors on a regular basis for the rest of 2017 and steadily continuing in 2018.

One aspect of the Me Too movement’s affect on Hollywood that has not been as widely reported, however, is the significant number of films and properties rendered virtually frozen by the fall of The Weinstein Company. Many different filmmakers, writers, and original creators have been fighting legalities to retain rights for properties they’d like to develop independent of The Weinstein Company.

Dimension Films, a division of The Weinstein Company, was the company currently holding rights to the Sin City franchise until recently. As of this time, original Sin City creator Frank Miller has officially regained the rights to one of his defining properties, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The last entry to the Sin City franchise to appear on the big screen was Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which was released in 2014. Prior to that, the first film, Sin City was released in 2005.

Before Weinstein’s arrest and the legal troubles began, Dimension Films and The Weinstein Company were considering creating a TV series out of the the property, with talks of such a series going all the way back to 2012.

Now Frank Miller has rights to develop movie sequels to the original 2005 film, Sin City, as well as rights to develop a television Sin City television series. One note of interest, however, is that the Weinstein-distributed Sin City: A Dame To Kill For was not addressed and not included in Frank Miller’s recent property rights retention.

Frank Miller originally created and wrote the first Sin City graphic novels himself, and the series was released in 1991. The graphic novel was adapted for the screen in 2005 by director Robert Rodriguez.

Sin City was a critical and commercial hit and touted an all-star cast which included Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, Elija Wood, Jamie King, Michael Madsen, and the late actors Michael Clark Duncan and Brittany Murphy.

The sequel, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, brought back much of the original cast and also added more big names, including Josh Brolin, Ray Liotta, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christopher Lloyd, Alexa Vega, and Lady Gaga.

Unfortunately for filmmakers, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For was considered a box office flop and was met with mixed critical reviews.