Author Topic: Paramount Buys DreamWorks ---> Expect New DVD Re-Releases  (Read 1298 times)

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Offline hemisphere

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Paramount Pictures has agreed to buy independent film studio DreamWorks SKG Inc. in a deal worth $1.6 billion in cash and debt. The sale on Sunday marks the end of an eleven-year dream for Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, who had grand ambitions for the upstart studio when it was created in 1994.

 
"When Steven, Jeffrey and I started the company and had to put an entire infrastructure together from day one, we had hoped to be able to make enough films to rationalize the cost of being our own distributor," Geffen said Sunday. "Sadly, we were never able to make enough films to make that economically sound."
 

Paramount will finance the deal by immediately selling the DreamWorks film library, valued between $850 million and $1 billion, most likely to an investment group that would pay Paramount fees to distribute future products derived from the films. Paramount will retain distribution rights to the fifty-nine titles in the DreamWorks library, which currently are released through Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Paramount will also make an exclusive seven-year distribution deal with DreamWorks Animation with rights to produce television shows using DreamWorks Animation characters.

 
Upon completion of the deal, Paramount will sign new employment agreements with Spielberg as a producer/director and Geffen as chairman of DreamWorks. The two will be responsible for producing four to six live action films a year.

 
Despite a number of critical and box-office hits, including "Gladiator," "Shrek" and "American Beauty," the studio found it harder to survive as an independent company. It abandoned plans to build a high-tech studio lot in Los Angeles in 1999, folded website Pop.com before it even launched in 2000, sold DreamWorks Records to Universal Music Group in 2004 and spun off its animation division which went public last year.


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Offline riverfan

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Re: Paramount Buys DreamWorks ---> Expect New DVD Re-Releases
« Reply #1 on: Dec 22, 2005 at 10:21 AM »
read about this news on inquirer.