Is Harvey Weinstein being forced out of The Weinstein Company by his brother?

There are 20 million new Harvey Weinstein stories, just FYI. If I miss something here, trust that I’m covering it separately today or over the next few days. I’m trying to stick to themes, and the theme of this post is “Harvey Weinstein is most likely over in Hollywood.” It seems like fait accompli, but I guess Ol’ Harv still believes he can have some kind of comeback, maybe if he just sues his way out of it. So, here are some bullet points of all of the sh-t that’s gone down over the course of about 60 hours:

Lisa Bloom quit Team Weinstein. Bloom is Gloria Allred’s daughter, and Allred was publicly critical of her daughter for being part of Weinstein’s team. Bloom was front and center in the first days, almost like she was being used as some kind of feminist-shield for Weinstein’s disgusting behavior. On Friday, Bloom released a statement praising Weinstein for not being one of those perverts who attacks his alleged victims (O RLY?). A day later, she announced that she was quitting his team. Lanny Davis also quit Team Harvey within the same hour.

The future of Harvey’s role in The Weinstein Company. As soon as the NYT dropped their report last Thursday, Weinstein announced he would be taking a “leave of absence” from TWC. That’s not good enough. Apparently, TWC’s board met on Friday. “Sources” claimed that the board would be deciding Weinstein’s fate, but there was no big announcement. Still, sources insist that Harvey will be suspended as co-chairman, and that “nobody wants him there.” Apparently, he can’t be fired because of certain clauses in his contract, and there’s some kind of lengthy process to have him formally removed, which is probably happening right now. For now, TWC “will be run by his brother and TWC co-chairman Bob Weinstein and COO David Glasser.” Oh, and three members of the all-male, nine-member board resigned on Friday during their emergency board meeting. TWC has also hired a law firm to investigate the company and Weinstein’s history as sort of an internal (and ass-covering) move. Fox News did something similar when Roger Ailes was outed as a pervert and a serial harasser.

Conspiracy Theory: The Silent Brother. Harvey’s exploits have been an open secret for decades. His brother and business partner Bob probably had a very good idea what was happening. Bob kept his nose clean (at least publicly, I can’t recall any rumors about Bob) and waited. Allegedly, Bob might have been compiling some dirt on Harvey as he waited. Page Six’s sources theorize that Bob fed some of the damaging information to the New York Times because Bob wanted control of TWC. Considering this comes from Page Six – the same outlet who got Harvey’s exclusive first interview – I’d say that this conspiracy comes straight from Team Harvey. But who knows if it’s true?

Poor Benedict Cumberbatch. I mean, I’m choosing to feel sorry for the actors who have worked with Harvey and TWC over the years. Those films with have asterisks for years to come, and I’m personally not going to “cancel” half of Hollywood just for their associations with Weinstein. Like, Weinstein nurtured Colin Firth’s career. I cannot bring myself to cancel Firth. It’s going to be especially bad for the three films Weinstein was going to push this Oscar season too - Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen; The Current War, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon and Nicholas Hoult; and The Upside, starring Bryan Cranston. No one knows what will happen with these would-be Oscar campaigns. At least Wind River has already been released, although it was probably due for a splashy re-release in December. The Current War was going to be the big one, and it has a November release on the books and they likely already had some Comet Sophie photo-ops planned. Now we won’t see any of it.