The Catholic League petition requesting Disney to drop Miramax garnered approximately 300,000 signatures. They were mailed to Disney chief Michael Eisner; the media were notified of the mailing.
The decision to put pressure on Disney stems from the Disney-Miramax relationship (the former owns the latter) and the anti-Catholic movies that the Miramax co-chairman, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, like to distribute and produce. In 1995, the Catholic-bashing film “Priest” was distributed by Miramax and now the Weinsteins are poised to produce “Dogma.”
The Catholic League is delighted that Disney told Miramax to dump “Dogma” (it was judged “inappropriate for all our labels” by Disney officials). Because the Weinsteins persisted with the movie by putting up their own money (some $14 million), it indicated to us that the time had come to push Disney to dump Miramax altogether. The great response that our petition got suggests that the timing couldn’t be better for Michael Eisner to tell the Weinsteins to take a walk.
