It was a strange thing to be at the Sundance Film Festival when the official news hit that Miramax was no more. We'd been expecting it for a while, of course, after Disney shuttered most of the offices last December and cut down the release slate, but it was sad to see such a historically important indie studio-- hell, the studio that made Sundance what it was-- close its doors while seeing so many great new indie films at the festival, all of which could use a Miramax to support them.

But as it turns out, Zombie Miramax may be back to haunt us after all. The New York Times reports that Disney is offering the Miramax name and its 700-film library to interested bidders for the low, low price of just over $700 million. The Weinstein brothers are not bidders just yet, likely because The Weinstein Company is low on funds, not because they're not interested in reclaiming the name of the company name for their parents.

One serious bidder, though, is apparently Summit, the new distributor that is flush with Twilight cash but has pretty much no other movies to its name. The Miramax library, which includes Shakespeare in Love, Chicago and Pulp Fiction, could help them boost TV and DVD revenue while pouring all that money into better sparkly vampire effects, or maybe even throwing their weight behind more movies like The Hurt Locker. The latter situation wouldn't be too bad, actually-- the carcass of one indie distributor goes toward building up another one to replace it. It's the circle of life.