Today's Hollywood Reporter notes that TWC's bosses of acquisition and production Michelle Krumm and Maeva Gatineau left through the back door at the beginning of October, while production execs Michael Cole and Carla Gardini will follow with marketing VP Gary Faber in short order. All were Miramax veterans at the end of their first contracts with TWC. Harvey says he intends to replace them, and with Inglourious Basterds [sic] currently shooting in Germany and Rob Marshall's musical Nine on the way soon after, face-value presumes to believe him.

But we'd much sooner believe he'd sell the operation for parts — Basterds, Nine, the just-shelved Forest Whitaker drama Hurricane Season, Fanboys, Shanghai and anything else Fox Searchlight, Focus Features, Flopz™ or another willing suitor can squeeze into a shopping cart on a 60-second spree through the storage locker. (Sorry, though, Lifetime — you still can't have Project Runway.) Even if The Reader can surmount its rush-job ego drama to make a legit awards-season run, whatever prestige accompanies it will wind up attributed to everybody but poor Harvey. It's almost pitiable.

Almost. In the end, the Weinstein brothers' public incompetence is really too willful to lament and too insistent to shock. Take today's Variety item, for example, in which Bob Weinstein, whose genre arm Dimension has itself survived without a production president since buying out Richard Saperstein last year, announced a greenlight for 18 titles to be produced this fall and released to straight to the Dimension Extreme DVD label in 2009. (This coming the same day Dimension shelved its Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road indefinitely.) They're all franchise installments or remakes — Pulse 2, Midnight Man 2 and 3, Children of the Corn, Chapter XXIV, etc. — budgeted between $3 million and $6 million. “Having learned how profitable a video library is and having already found great success launching franchises on video, this was a natural and obvious progression,” Bob told the trade.

Contrast that with his appearance sitting in for Harvey last week at Nielsen's Media and Money conference, where the Reporter cited his bearishness toward a "dwindling DVD market" and the vague hope that he might be lucky enough to exploit that library — not $75 million in new productions — through VOD and Web downloads. Is the Weinsteins' output deal with Showtime richer than we thought? And with almost as many empty desks as delayed titles left in the office, who is selling these films? How are they even getting made?

That said, Zack and Miri Make a Porno will probably open in the Top 3 next week with little more than stick figures on its poster and morbidly obese Kevin Smith regaling America with his stories of broken toilets, so what do we know? As you were, Harvey, we guess.

• Exodus at Weinstein Co. [THR]

• Dimension adds to video business [Variety]

The best part, though? According to reports (excerpted after the jump) the Weinsteins are actually paying Showtime to air their product:

[I]n an unusual twist, the indie distributor apparently will make an advance "bonus" payment of as much as $100 million to the pay cable channel.

As in other pay TV deals, Showtime would parcel out payments to the Weinsteins according to the performance of the various films at the domestic boxoffice — minus the prepayment, which is essentially a discount on the amount Showtime will owe the supplier.

Declining to discuss the financial terms of the deal, the Weinstein Co. co-chief Harvey Weinstein called the suggestion of a prepayment clause "rumor and innuendo" but added that in his opinion, the deal is "a game-changer" for his company.

The only game we see changing is Showtime's, which blew off Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM (the Weinsteins' original cable partner) demands three months ago and which, before yesterday, didn't have a theatrical output deal in place. That it achieved not only that, but got the distributor to pay for it, thus underwriting a good chunk of the original programming it needs to keep its carriers happy? That's awesome.

Granted, it's TWC — the $100 million is widely perceived as insurance against the day when Matt Blank's hotline to Harvey bounces back with an automated disconnection message. And regardless of whether or not Harvey pulls out the big '08-'09 he's planning — Gawker's analysis seems to suggest otherwise — Showtime will need more than Tarantino Oscar bait to fill its slate (its Viacom divorce partner CBS Films is good for roughly 30-40 projects in that time). But as marriages of convenience go, we've seen worse. Anyway, it's hard to resist the idea of the new Showtime as something of a mail-order bride. Best of luck to all!

• Weinstein Co. inks deal with Showtime [THR]

The original asshole writers, S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, will return for another round of well-paid douchebaggery, which Weinstein's Dimension Films will foist on the American public as a "worthy addition to its family film slate" at a dark date to be determined. Self-loathing producer David Foster is coming back as well, pledging to "factor in advances in technology" and maximize soul-destroying audience pandering. No word yet on whether the shrill Indian scientist so expertly stereotyped by Fisher Stevens will make his own comeback, but whether it's Stevens or Guttenberg or fake-ass CGI or anything else you can conjure to make this anti-idea worse, that's what Weinstein will deliver. God is dead, goodbye cruel world. Seriously, fuck this movie.

• 'Short Circuit's' Johnny 5 still alive [Variety]