The dream is over for Steven Spielberg. Just 11 years after the world's most successful film director founded his own studio, DreamWorks is on the block.
NBC Universal, the media and entertainment arm of GE - the world's biggest conglomerate - is deep in negotiations to buy the DreamWorks' slate of forthcoming releases, the television library and a back-catalogue of 60 films, for a putative $1bn (£551m). Spielberg's ambition to lever his money-making creativity into movie moguldom has failed.
When SKG (Spielberg, Katzenberg, Geffen) was founded eleven years ago the plans were ambitious -- something like what Walt Disney envisioned half a century ago.
The SKG trio made clear at the launch that DreamWorks would not be just another Hollywood film studio but a 21st-century multi-media colossus embracing live action movies, animated features, television production, video games, music sales and a burgeoning internet presence. They planned to open a vast studio complex at Playa Vista, a stretch of empty wetlands south of LAX airport in Los Angeles.
But it was not to be. First they ran afoul of the Greens.
[A]fter five years battling ornithologists and environmentalists, plans for the DreamWorks studio failed to take off.
Then the tech boom burst.
The company's internet business fizzled along with the dotcom bubble and its video game division followed suit.
And musical tastes (Geffen's strong suit) changed.
Geffen was never able to duplicate the success he had with Geffen Records and in November 2003 DreamWorks Records was sold to Universal.
And the audience for "quality" TV never materialized.
DreamWorks Television also reined in its high hopes... it soon became just another production house churning out run-of-the-mill network product. It most recently found itself embroiled in a legal spat with populist Fox - controlled by Rupert Murdoch - over who first conceived the tacky boxing reality show The Contender.
Oh, there were successes along the way. Spielberg could still churn out audience-pleasing movies like Saving Private Ryan, and they produced Ridley Scott's Gladiator as well as the atrocious, but profitable, Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. But even these did not offset the seemingly endless litany of failures.
What went wrong?
You want the short answer? OK, here it is..., "Spielberg."
Spielberg had grander ambitions than to merely make profit. And it emerged that Spielberg's modus operandi did not simply look at the bottom line....
Spielberg was running more of a film makers' co-op than a hard-nosed business. He liked to take a personal interest in important decisions for all major projects, which, because of his hectic schedule, often caused interminable delays. Some film makers became so frustrated that they took their ideas elsewhere.
Spielberg was only happy giving the go-ahead for films clearly in the Spielberg mould - films he would have liked to have made himself if he had time. DreamWorks' rosta of half a dozen or so movies a year, with little diversity and few surprises, was not big enough to carry weight with cinema chains, which prefer to accommodate studios which offer dozens of films of different sorts. Unless a picture was tagged "Directed by Steven Spielberg," it was pushed to the back of the line.
Spielberg's micro-management of projects also infuriated DreamWorks' executives, who were not allowed to make films of their choosing. The churn of senior production staff became debilitating. For a small studio with a minimal output, its staff of 475 was too expensive to maintain.
The original investors, especially the silent partner, Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft), wanted out. They went public, selling off their animation division, but that was disappointing -- the "bean counters" on Wall Street were not impressed with the studio's performance. Pressure was building. Geffen wanted out, out, OUT!
Then came "The Island." [my review here] It was supposed to be the summer blockbuster, but it tanked. After that Spielberg himself lost interest.
It seems that over the last dozen years, Spielberg has had a change of heart. His belief that the only job in Hollywood more amusing than being a movie director is to be a studio head has proved a delusion. He has stopped yearning to become the next Irving Thalberg, the MGM producer who made everything from Erich von Stroheim silents to Marx Brothers comedies. Aged 58, Spielberg seems resigned to being simply the world's most successful director.
So where does that leave the investors?
It all depends on Spielberg. His continued association is worth something, but how much?
Stay tuned....
Come to think of it..., this would make a great movie!
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