Monday
09Feb2009
Disney and DreamWorks Tie the Knot
Monday, February 9, 2009 at 2:21PM
I think this combo makes for slightly strange bedfellows, but Disney and DreamWorks have reached a deal on a "long-term distribution arrangement," according to
Variety. Talks with Disney have been going on for a while, and apparently, that as much as anything led to
the dissolution of the agreement DreamWorks was cooking up with Universal.
Colin Boyd | Permalink | in Disney, DreamWorks, Studios, Universal Studios | Print Article | Email Article | 5 Comments | Share Article
Reader Comments (5)
So it appears as if Disney is sort of becoming a "Mother-ship" of sorts for all the other animation houses out there...
I know Dreamworks Animation split with the other divisions last year, but isn't Katzenberg still involved somehow? No matter where he sits these days, this has to be a bitter-sweet deal for him...
I wonder what this will do for the future of animated films. Its been Pixar and Dreamwroks competing really each year in animated movies. Now that they are together will there be less creativity and more marketable films that will guarantee money? Who else can compete at the animated blockbuster level? This pretty much seals that genre it seems. Am I wrong about this? I don't keep up with animated movies much, these are just casual observations.
Well, they won't be together; the deal doesn't include animated films. But it does beg the question, certainly. DreamWorks is probably outperforming Disney/Pixar commercially, though.
Over the past five years, DreamWorks has made $1.9 billion off of 10 animated movies, and Disney/BV/Pixar has made $1.3 billion off of eight movies. Even if you roll Finding Nemo in from 2003, that's still a little less per picture ($1.8 billion) that Disney has made over the same time period.
And let's not forget how incredibly expensive those Pixar movies are. So DreamWorks will keep the animated stuff separate, perhaps because of the competition.
Right now, no other studio is built to compete picture-for-picture with these two. Fox has done well lately, and Focus might have a good year, but it's clearly not their top priority.
Yeah, I realized my blunder when I hit the "create post" button. This deal only includes the live action stuff which has never been profitable enough to stand on it's own. Makes me mad too, because I wanted to take a jibe at the bad Super Bowl commercial for "Monster v. Aliens"...
I seem to remember the first big Dreamworks release being "The Peacemaker" starring George Clooney. The Bluray Special Edition of that fine piece of work should make this deal worth its weight in printed money all by itself.
By the way... Focus?
Or are millions of American moms planning on putting copies of Waltz with Bashir in their children's Easter baskets?