DreamWorks

DreamWorks Studios

Type	Public
Founded	1994
Founder(s)	Steven Spielberg Jeffrey Katzenberg David Geffen
Headquarters	Universal City, California, United States
Products	motion pictures, television programs
Revenue	$4.5 billion USD (2008)
Owner(s)	Independent (1993-2006) Viacom (2006-2008) Reliance ADA Group (50%)
Employees	120,000 (2008)
Website	http://www.dreamworksstudios.com

DreamWorks Pictures, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses totalling more than $100 million each.

DreamWorks began in 1994 as an ambitious attempt by media moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (forming the SKG present on the bottom of the DreamWorks logo) to create a new Hollywood studio. In December 2005, the founders agreed to sell the studio to Viacom, parent of Paramount Pictures. The sale was completed in February 2006. In 2008, DreamWorks announced its intention to end its partnership with Paramount and signed a US$1.5 billion deal to produce films with India's Reliance ADA Group.^[1] Reliance provided $325M of equity to fund recreating Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio as an independent entity. Clark Hallren, former Managing Director of the Entertainment Industries group of J.P. Morgan Securities and Alan J. Levine of J.P. Morgan Entertainment Advisors led the Reliance team in structuring the capital and business plan for the company.^[2][3] The movie studio is 50% owned by Reliance which is led by Anil Ambani.^[4]

DreamWorks' animation arm was spun off in 2004 into DreamWorks Animation SKG. Its films were distributed worldwide by Paramount, but the animation studio remained independent of Paramount/Viacom.

History

The company was founded following Katzenberg being fired from The Walt Disney Company in 1994. At the suggestion of Spielberg's friend, the two made an agreement with long-time Katzenberg collaborator David Geffen to start their own studio. The studio was officially founded on October 12, 1993 with financial backing of $33 million from each of the three main partners and $500 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

DreamWorks Interactive is a computer and video game developer founded in 1995, as a subsidiary of DreamWorks SKG.

In 1998, DreamWorks released their first full-length animated feature, Antz.

In 1999, 2000 and 2001, DreamWorks won three consecutive Academy Awards for Best Picture for American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind (the later two with Universal).

On February 24, 2000, Electronic Arts announced the acquisition of DreamWorks Interactive from DreamWorks and merged it with EA Pacific and Westwood Studios. DreamWorks Interactive became EA Los Angeles (EALA).

DreamWorks Records, the company's record label (the first project of which was George Michael's Older in the US). The first band signed to this label was the "eels" with the release of their debut album "Beautiful Freak". The single "Novocaine for the Soul" was the first song that gave them international success, most notably in the UK, where it hit number 10 in the UK Singles Chart in February 1997. It also hit number one on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart (which was called Modern Rock Tracks at the time) for two weeks in October 1996, and remained on the charts for 25 weeks. Although the record company never lived up to expectations, and was sold in October 2003 to Universal Music Group, which operated the label as DreamWorks Nashville. That label was shut down in 2005 when its flagship artist, Toby Keith, departed to form his own label.^[5]

The studio has had its greatest financial success with movies, specifically animated movies. DreamWorks Animation teamed up with Pacific Data Images (now known as PDI/DreamWorks) in 1996, emerging as the main competitor to Pixar in the age of computer-generated animation and one of the few competitors to Disney in creating traditionally animated feature films. DreamWorks Animation has produced some of the highest grossing animated hits of all time, such as Antz (1998), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Shrek (2001), its sequels Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007) and Shrek Forever After (2010); Shark Tale (2004), Madagascar (2005), Over the Hedge (2006), Flushed Away (2006), Bee Movie (2007), Kung Fu Panda (2008) and How to Train Your Dragon (2010). Based on the films' success, DreamWorks Animation has spun off as its own publicly traded company.

In recent years, DreamWorks has scaled back. It stopped plans to build a high-tech studio, sold its music division, and has only produced a few television series, Las Vegas, Carpoolers and On the Lot, for example.

David Geffen admitted that DreamWorks had come close to bankruptcy twice. Under Katzenberg's watch, the studio suffered a $125 million loss on Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas,^[6] and also overestimated the DVD demand for Shrek 2.^[7] In 2005, out of their two large budget pictures, The Island bombed at the domestic box office, while War of the Worlds was produced as a joint effort with Paramount which was the first to reap the profits.^[6]

In December 2005, Viacom's Paramount Pictures agreed to purchase the live-action studio. The deal was valued at approximately $1.6 billion, an amount that included about $400 million in debt assumptions. The company completed its acquisition on February 1, 2006.^[8]

On March 17, 2006, Paramount agreed to sell a controlling interest in the DreamWorks live-action library (pre-09/16/2005; DW Funding, LLC) to Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Entertainment II.^[9] The film library is valued at $900 million. Paramount retained the worldwide distribution rights to these films, as well as various ancillary rights, including music publishing, sequels and merchandising—this includes films that had been made by Paramount and DreamWorks (the music publishing rights were later licensed to Sony-ATV Music Publishing when that company acquired Paramount's Famous Music subdivision). The sale was completed on May 8, 2006.^[10]

In June 2008, Variety reported that DreamWorks was looking for financing that would allow it to continue operations as an independent production company once its deal with Paramount ended later in the year.^[11] Most of the backing would come from an Indian investment firm called Reliance ADA Group. The DreamWorks trademarks are owned by DreamWorks Animation, and the new company would need their approval to use the trademarks. In September 2008, it was reported by Variety that Dreamworks closed a deal with Reliance to create a stand-alone production company and end its ties to Paramount.^[12]

On March 12, 2007, DreamWorks Animation announced it would release all of its films, beginning with Monsters vs. Aliens (2009), in stereoscopic 3D.^[13]

On February 9, 2009, DreamWorks entered into a long-term, 30-picture distribution deal with the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group by which the films will be released through the Touchstone Pictures banner over the next five years. The deal came after negotiations broke off with Universal Pictures just days earlier.^[14] However, this deal does not include Indian rights, which will be handled by Reliance,^[15] nor does it include DreamWorks Animation, whose films will still be distributed by Paramount. Also not included are sequels to live-action films released before the Paramount merger, or those released by Paramount themselves - Paramount retains the rights to these franchises, and one such sequel, Little Fockers, will be released by Paramount and DreamWorks internationally in December 2010 (Universal owns domestic rights).

Logo

The Dreamworks logo features a young boy sitting on a crescent moon while fishing. The general idea for the logo was the brainchild of company co-founder Steven Spielberg, who originally wanted a computer generated image, whereas Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren, of Industrial Light and Magic suggested a hand-painted one. Muren then contacted a friend and fellow artist, Robert Hunt, to paint it. Hunt worked on both versions, for each of which his son William was cast as the model for the boy, and Spielberg liked the CGI one better. The music accompanying the logo to start live-action DreamWorks movies was specially composed by John Williams (although a number of DreamWorks films, such as Galaxy Quest and Saving Private Ryan, omit the music); the DreamWorks Animation logo has music from the Harry Gregson-Williams/John Powell score for Shrek. The main logo shows the scene at night, while the Dreamworks Animation logo shows it during the day. The "Night" Logo is Dark Blue.

The logo attached to feature films was made at ILM based on paintings by Hunt, in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Films, Dave Carson and Clint Goldman.^[16]

Distribution

Currently, United International Pictures, a joint venture of Paramount and Universal, has the rights to release DreamWorks' films internationally (except South Korea), and will also handle releases from the new DreamWorks. The broadcast rights to many DreamWorks films are owned by ABC. Ironically, ABC (along with Pixar) is owned by Disney, with which Katzenberg had a falling out.

In South Korea, CJ Entertainment has the rights to release all DreamWorks' films, except some co-productions (for example, Minority Report was distributed by Fox, and The Island by Warner Bros., due to these studios having owned the international rights to these films) It is the result of investing in the studio from the beginning.

Awards

Edwin R. Leonard, CTO of Dreamworks Animation, won a special achievement award at the 2008 Annies for driving their innovative work with Open Source Software and Linux.^[17]

Filmography

DW Funding

First film library spun off in DW Funding, LLC and controlling interest sold to Soros Strategic Partners LP and Dune Entertainment II LLC. In February 2010, Viacom acquired the Soros/Dune stake.

Between the "Soros era" and the Paramount Pictures era

This library was retained by DreamWorks, but released before Paramount Pictures fully took over distribution.

Paramount Pictures

Paramount-distributed sequels, post-2010

Due to being part of a franchise established before or during the Paramount era, these films are released by Paramount.

Touchstone Pictures

TV series and specials

Musical artists

Computer and video games

Animations

References

External links

• Official website
• DreamWorks Animated Productions at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• DreamWorks SKG at the Internet Movie Database
• DreamWorks fan site

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