Looks like Paramount Studios has positioned itself to buy Dreamworks to the tune of about $1.6 Billion dollars. Wow… that’s a lot of cheese.
I still remember when Dreamworks was born. It was a huge media circus (at least in certain circles). Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen had come together and were going to change Hollywood… change the world even. Dreamworks wasn’t just going to be another film studio. It was going to be revolutionary. It was going to be multi-platform leading the way with not only movies, but music and the internet as well. They almost had a Steve Jobs Apple like flavour to them.
But in the end, Dreamworks wound up just being another film studio. Some hits, some misses, but the “Dream” never really came to fruition at all. And now the “Dream” dies as it’s sold to Paramount. The good folks over at Canoe give us this:
The announcement was made by Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, who noted that enhancing Paramount’s pipeline of pictures is a “key strategic objective in restoring Paramounts stature as a leader in filmed entertainment.”
The agreement does not include DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., the most profitable part of the company that went public last year. But Paramount does gain the right to distribute the studio’s lucrative animated films, including the Shrek franchise.
It’s too bad. Although Dreamworks never really became what it set out to become, it was still one of the more creative major players in Hollywood… even with it’s faults. It’ll be interesting to see how SKG does as it’s own entity (even though it’s sort of functioned like that fora while).
