It’s finally a done deal. After months of haggling, messy breakups, and tentative reconcillations, Dreamworks SKG has been sold to Paramount pictures for the tidy sum of $1.6 billion dollars (as an aside, remember when ‘billion’ was this astronomically high figure of no practical value? I wonder when we’ll start seeing trillions, or better yet quintillions).
Paramount plans to offset some of the cost by parsing out the 59 films Dreamworks library to the highest bidder. They take control of all of DreamWorks’ current projects, their television division, exclusive rights to any future animated TV characters in TV shows, as well as the distribution rights to DreamWorks Animation movies for the period of 2006-2013.
Opinions about whether Paramount has made a wise move in dishing out so much cash for an inconsistently successful smaller-scale studio, have been generally favourable, with some claiming that it marks a favourable turning point for the company.
December 15th, 2005 at 1:27 am
I wonder what happened to the ambitions they had when SKG created the studio. Either they seriously BS-ted then, or something went seriously wrong.
Either way, that piece of news makes me a little sad.
December 15th, 2005 at 8:04 am
I had the same thought, and was a little saddened as well. They were in a massive amount of debt, so I suppose the move took a lot of burden off of SKG, but I had so hoped that their labour of love wouldn’t be amalgamated into a larger setting. Or, if that did happen, I think I would have liked to see it with parent company Universal. It’s too bad those talks didn’t work out.
And selling off the DreamWorks library? Ouch. Makes business sense, but torpedos all the work that SKG have put in making a name for their studio.
December 20th, 2005 at 6:44 am
I have to admit I’m not quite sure what selling the Dreamworks library entails.
Why would you have preferred Universal, I’m curious?
December 20th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
I guess I saw Universal as less fuss. They were the SKG parent company and all of the DreamWorks offices and whatnot are on the Universal Studios lot. Turns out that Universal is going to let Spielberg and Co. keep the offices.