The rift between Paramount and DreamWorks is no secret. Many industry insiders expected a split sooner rather than later. Today DreamWorks and Universal heads were seen breaking bread together, could this mean that Universal/DreamWorks won’t be far behind? Nikki Finke reports:
“Jeff Zucker and Ron Meyer had lunch in the Universal Studios commissary today with Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider — and everybody was all smiles. Talk about a virtual public announcement that a reunion between the studio and DreamWorks isn’t far behind!”
Let us take a quick glance at just a couple of DreamWorks’ accomplishments over the last year:
- Transformers: $701 million worldwide, and the DVD has set a yearly sales record with 8.3 million copies since its release last week. Not bad for a $150 million movie.
- Shrek the Third: $792 million worldwide
- Disturbia: $20 million movie makes $116 million worldwide and over $40 million on DVD.
- Blades of Glory: $166 million Worldwide and over $40 million on DVD
- Dreamgirls: $154 million worldwide, $30+ million on DVD, 2 Academy Awards and six more nominations
Paramount set a new $1 Billion record back in July, almost entirely due to films from the DreamWorks pipeline. I can’t imagine that GE would let DreamWorks go this time around. Spielberg has clearly always wanted to call Universal home, and hasn’t even moved his office off the lot. When we met with Spielberg last month, it was on the Universal lot at the Amblin/DreamWorks office.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:04 pm
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. I’ll be sure to check in and see what new news you have on this topic!
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:46 pm
this isn’t too surprising since Munich was DreamWorks/Universal
October 24th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Great. Paramount losing a cash cow means they have to revert to another old cash cow… That means we’ll have 10 Star Trek movies in 2008, a new Star Trek tv show, and TOS sold in about 15 different DVD/HD-DVD/BlurAy packs.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
What I would like to say this is for Mr. Steven Spielberg!
I am a great fan of his and I would like to say that he makes great
movies by remaking old movies into newer versions.Well what I
wanted to ask him if he can remake this movie into a newer version
it is my very favorite it is called “The day the earth stood still” which
was made back in the 40`s.He did a real great job on the movie called ‘The war of the worlds” now if it is possible maybe he should
consider trying the day the earth stood still too!We all fans will be
extremely appreciated if he decides to make a new version!