Mr. Video (Photo: STV)

Welcome to the first edition of The Reeler's Business Digest, a briefing of essential industry tidbits that I am hoping will join the blog as a regular feature in the weeks and months ahead. By "regular," I guess I really mean "whenever it occurs to me," but that doesn't augur inconsistency--that just means I have to do a better job of combing through all these RSS feeds.

So, anyway, let's see:

--Variety reports that The Weinstein Company is pacting with California-based distributor Genius Products to facilitiate TWC's home-video releases. The Weinsteins will control 70 percent of the new venture, while Genius (which already handles Sundance Channel and Wellspring titles) will be required to send a biohazard crew to Weinstein HQ monthly to remove mouldering films from a shelf in a room 300 feet below Hudson Street. This is what they call a "win-win" in Hollywood; in Tribeca, it is called housecleaning.

--Disney CEO/theater-killa Robert Iger is back in the news rattling his saber about closing theatrical-DVD-TV release windows. This time, as the Wall Street Journal notes (via Cinematical), he may as well be coughing SARS directly onto the John Fithian posse: "We'll have a conversation with theater owners to see whether we can move them more peacefully ... but I think in the end, it's going to have to be more by force than through negotiation or diplomacy." Iger adds a couple of war metaphors, a few numbers and basically pisses farther and longer than he ever has in the past. The Journal, meanwhile, with its third or fourth Iger-related piece in the last few months, should just give the guy a blog and be done with it.

--Shock of shocks: Lions Gate was over-hyped. The little "anti-studio" that had everything going for it, could do no wrong and was wiping its imperial ass with $100 bills has begun lighting more $100 bills on fire to kill the stench of its own shit. Blaming Usher's fizzled In The Mix, "falling library margins" and whatever else his publicist could sctratch together after LGF stock plunged 11.4 percent, president Jon Feltheimer told analysts, "We are definitely in a challenging time for our industry, but...we are poised to take a great leap forward with new formats and new electronic delivery platforms, which will deliver higher margin revenue." Well put, cap'n--this is nothing a multi-picture deal with LL Cool J and 1.2 million Dirty Dancing DVD's cannot fix. Think of it as an "anti-clusterfuck"--they will be juuuuuust fine, thank you.