KEY POINTS:
For an ambitious studio executive, the prospect of stepping into Harvey Weinstein's shoes must be a daunting one - rather like a young actor tackling a role synonymous with a more established star.
But Daniel Battsek, the 48-year-old Briton who runs Miramax, the Hollywood studio Weinstein founded, bears
his newfound status with ease.
Battsek, an industry executive for 20 years, is no novice, but he is everything the gregarious Weinstein isn't: modest, polite and business-like.
But, like Weinstein, he can be ruthless and he gets things done, which is why Disney, which bought Miramax in 1993, entrusted him with the studio after Weinstein and his brother Bob left under a cloud in 2005, leaving a legacy of bitterness over losses at the division.
Battsek reports to Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook but, as president of Miramax, he exercises considerable autonomy, even if some insist he is running a studio that has retrenched since Weinstein's exit (Battsek prefers to use the term "refocused").
In Weinstein's last years Miramax, which built a reputation as a sort of cinematic "super-indie", began to produce big-budget blockbusters that didn't always live up to expectations (The Brothers Grimm), and a few - Cold Mountain, The Aviator - that did.
But it competed with Disney's other, more profitable film studios for resources and has now returned to its roots as a purveyor of pictures on a smaller scale; films with an independent quality, if not an arthouse sensibility.
Battsek was chosen, in part, because he knows how to turn a small film project into a blockbuster. A case in point is The Queen. It is almost certain to win Dame Helen Mirren an Oscar, although Battsek is already tiring of the awards ceremony circus.
"The Golden Globes, the New York film critics, the LA film critics, the Baftas ... you see the same people up for the same awards and typically delivering the same speech."
The Queen has six nominations, and Peter O'Toole is a contender for best actor in another Miramax film, Venus.
That is thanks, in part, to Battsek's marketing acumen. The Queen started life as a "behind the palace walls" account of a brief moment in British history.
"We shifted the emphasis into a far more 'worldly' study of the way in which leaders adapt (or don't) to public pressure and change and focused on the more personal story of a woman struggling to come to terms with the passage of time."
Battsek pulled off a similar trick with Calendar Girls, which also starred Mirren.
Tanned, and with the slightest hint of a transatlantic drawl, Battsek was in London last week to pick up a Bafta (British Academy of Film and Television Arts award) or two. The Queen won best film and best actress and Venus was nominated for two. Not bad for a middle-class boy from north London.
Battsek's brother, John, is a film-maker, although that is where the family connection with the industry ends; their father was a travel agent, although he was also something of a film buff.
In his early 20s, Battsek traipsed around Soho in central London trying to get a break in the film industry without much success.
"The industry was at rock-bottom. Attendances were down to 55 million. They are around twice that now."
He ended up moving to Sydney to find work as a runner, where a group of young Australian directors, including Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong, were blazing a trail.
On his return to London, Battsek began working with a similarly thrusting community of youthful British executives, becoming a director of Palace Pictures and distributing small, independent movies including Mona Lisa and The Crying Game.
He joined Buena Vista International, Disney's distribution arm, in 1991 and built up a fledgling British film studio, BVI UK Comedy, alongside it.
The surprise international success of one of its films - Calendar Girls - made Battsek's reputation at Disney's Burbank headquarters. The success of The Queen is likely to cement it.
Disney insiders say Battsek was chosen to nurse some bruised egos and restore order at Miramax after the departure of the studio's iconoclastic founders.
He is based in New York, which provides a better creative environment for the type of films he works on, and lives across the river in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, where he can escape the relentless urban onslaught in a spacious home with a garden.
It is a neighbourhood of journalists and artists which shares some of the characteristics of Barnes, the London suburb he and his family left behind.
Battsek misses London's greenery and its sport.
An avid Chelsea fan, he confesses: "My visits to London tend to coincide with home games."
But American sports are growing on him, he says, and the New York Yankees, whose free-spending ways mirror Chelsea's, have become a surrogate team.
He is still learning about their tumultuous history, which has turned the Yankees into the world's longest-running sporting soap opera, and there are some other aspects of American life Battsek was unprepared for, despite his frequent visits.
For example, films are woven into the cultural fabric of the nation, he says, in a way they may never be at home.
More people watch films and talk about the cinema, and box-office revenues are printed in both the popular and highbrow newspapers.
He has yet to be ambushed by desperate screenwriters brandishing scripts in restaurants, but he does confess he still feels like the new boy at Disney, and the new kid in town.
Battsek recently found himself dining in a Manhattan apartment "half the size of a wing of the Metropolitan museum" with some of the city's powerbrokers, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"I looked up and saw my wife talking to Rupert Murdoch and thought 'what am I doing here?'."
Whatever he's doing, he seems to be doing it rather well.
SEX, FICTION AND ROYALTY
1979: Harvey and Bob Weinstein form Miramax Films in Buffalo, New York, to distribute movies.
1982: The company has its first hit with The Secret Policeman's Other Ball.
1989: Sex, Lies and Videotape is released; Pelle the Conqueror wins an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
1992: Dimension Films is formed to release horror and science fiction pictures.
1993: The Weinsteins sell their firm to Walt Disney and remain in charge as co-chairmen.
1994: Pulp Fiction grosses US$108m in the US, a company record.
1997:The English Patient wins Miramax its first Best Picture Oscar.
2000: The Weinsteins sign a seven-year contract extension; Scary Movie grosses US$157m in the US.
2003: Chicago grosses US$306m worldwide, a new company record.
2004: The Weinsteins clash with Disney executives over Michael Moore's controversial film Fahrenheit 9/11.
2005:The Weinsteins leave. Daniel Battsek becomes Miramax president.
2006: The Queen (starring Helen Mirren) wins critical acclaim and commercial success.
- OBSERVER