DreamWorks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
DreamWorks, L.L.C., doing business as DreamWorks SKG, is a Big Ten studio in the United States of America which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games, and television programming.
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Overview
The initials "SKG" stand for the company's co-founders, Steven Spielberg (movie director and founder of Amblin Entertainment), Jeffrey Katzenberg (former head of The Walt Disney Company's film studios), and David Geffen (founder of Geffen Records).
The company was founded following Katzenberg's forced resignation from The Walt Disney Company in 1994. At the suggestion of Spielberg's friend Robert Zemeckis, the two made an agreement with long-time Katzenberg collaborator Geffen to start their own studio. The studio was officially founded in October of 1994 with financial backing of $33 million from each of the three main partners and $500 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
The first DreamWorks film to be released was The Peacemaker, in 1997.
Between 1999 and 2001, DreamWorks won three consecutive best picture Oscars for American Beauty, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind. (The last two being co-productions with Universal Pictures.)
DreamWorks Records never lived up to expectations, and was sold in October 2003 to Universal Music Group, which now operates the label as DreamWorks Nashville.
The studio has had its greatest financial success with movies, specifically animated movies. DreamWorks Animation teamed up with PDI:Pacific Data Images (simply known as PDI/DreamWorks) in early 1998 to create some of highest grossing animated hits of all time, such as Antz(1998), Shrek (2001) and its sequel Shrek 2 (2004). Based on their success, DreamWorks Animation has spun off as its own publicly traded company. In fact, PDI/DreamWorks has emerged as the main competitor to Pixar in the age of computer-generated animation.
DreamWorks' speciality is to co-finance and co-distribute various film productions. DreamWorks has released movies with the following film companies:
- Universal Pictures
- Sony Pictures (through its Columbia banner)
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- Paramount Pictures
- 20th Century Fox
With co-financing and co-distribution, one studio will release the film internationally and the other domestically. Usually two films are a product of this deal. For example, both Minority Report and Road to Perdition were made by Dreamworks/20th Century Fox and released in 2002. For Minority Report, Fox released the film in the U.S., and Dreamworks released it internationally. For Road to Perdition, Dreamworks released the film in the U.S., and Fox released it internationally.
For obvious reasons, the only major studios Dreamworks has not co-released movies with is Walt Disney Pictures.
In recent years DreamWorks has scaled back. It stopped plans to build a high-tech studio, sold its music division, and cancelled its TV shows.
In July 2005 DreamWorks was in talks to sell its studio and film library to GE's NBC Universal. It is yet to be seen if this merger will go through and extingish another small Hollywood studio (a Sony-led consortium purchased MGM in early 2005). In October 2005 Viacom was also said to be interested.
Below is a list of its productions as of 2005.
Films
1997
- Amistad (1997)
- Mouse Hunt(1997)
- The Peacemaker (1997)
1998
- Antz (1998)
- Deep Impact (1998)
- Paulie (1998)
- The Prince of Egypt (1998)
- Saving Private Ryan (1998)
- Small Soldiers (1998)
1999
- American Beauty (1999)
- Forces of Nature (1999)
- Galaxy Quest (1999)
- The Haunting (1999)
- In Dreams (1999)
- The Love Letter (1999)
2000
- Almost Famous (2000)
- Cast Away (2000)
- Chicken Run (2000)
- An Everlasting Piece (2000)
- Gladiator (2000)
- Joseph: King of Dreams (2000)
- Meet the Parents (2000)
- The Road to El Dorado (2000)
- Road Trip (2000)
- Walk the Talk (2000)
- What Lies Beneath (2000)
2001
- Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
- A Beautiful Mind (2001)
- The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
- Evolution (2001)
- The Last Castle (2001)
- The Mexican (2001)
- Shrek (2001)
2002
- Catch Me If You Can (2002)
- Hollywood Ending (2002)
- Minority Report (2002)
- The Ring (2002)
- Road to Perdition (2002)
- Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
- The Time Machine (2002)
- Tuxedo, The (2002)
2003
- The Actors (2003)
- Anything Else (2003)
- Biker Boyz (2003)
- The Cat in the Hat (2003)
- Head of State (2003)
- House of Sand and Fog (2003)
- Millennium Actress (2003)
- Old School (2003)
- Paycheck (2003)
- Seabiscuit (2003)
- Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
- Soul Cailbur (2003)
2004
- The Assumption (2004)
- Anchorman (2004)
- Collateral (2004)
- Envy (2004)
- Eurotrip (2004)
- Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
- Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
- Meet the Fockers (2004)
- The Ring Two (2004)
- Shark Tale (2004)
- Shrek 2 (2004)
- The Stepford Wives (2004)
- Surviving Christmas (2004)
- The Terminal (2004)
- Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)
2005
- Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
- The Island (2005)
- Madagascar (2005)
- Red Eye (2005)
- War of the Worlds (2005)
In production
- Appearances (2005)
- Back Roads (2005)
- Hammer Down (2005)
- The Hands of Shang-Chi (2005)
- Killing Pablo (2005)
- Magick (2005)
- Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
- Munich (2005)
- Over the Hedge (2006)
- The Talisman (2005)
- Tortoise Vs. Hare (2005)
- Untitled Alexander the Great Project (2005)
- Flushed Away (2006)
- Why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn (2006)
- The Heartbreak Kid (2006)
- Shrek 3 (2007)
- Baywatch (2006)
- Untitled Marlene Dietrich Project (2006)
- Bee Movie (2007)
- The Dogs City (2008)
Announced
- Kung Fu Panda (2008)
- Grood Awakening (2008)
- How To Train Your Dragon (2009)
- It Came From Earth! (20??)
- Madagascar 2 (2008)
- Rex Havoc (20??)
- Route 66 (20??)
TV series
- Into the West (2005) (mini Series)
- Alienators: Evolution Continues (2001)
- Band of Brothers (2001) (mini series)
- The Contender (2005)
- Champs (1996)
- Freaks and Geeks (1999)
- High Incident (1996)
- Ink (1996)
- Invasion America (1998)
- The Job (2001)
- Las Vegas (2003)
- Oliver Beene (2003)
- The Pacific War (2006) (mini Series)
- Spin City (1996)
- Toonsylvania (1998)
- Undeclared (2001)
TV specials
- The Hatching of "Chicken Run" (2000)
- Gladiator Games: The Roman Bloodsport (2000)
- We Stand Alone Together (2001)
- What Lies Beneath: Constructing the Perfect Thriller (2001)
- Woody Allen: A Life in Film (2002)