Paramount buys Dreamworks

[cstephens]

I got an email alert from Daily Variety about this, and I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st. Wow, it's really true. The Daily Variety article is pretty in-depth, but you have to be a subscriber to read it, so here are a few other articles: here's a story via Reuters (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051210/bs_nm/media_viacom_dreamworks_dc_2), here's a short story about the deal being closed (http://news.yahoo.com/s/defamer/20051210/en_defamer/breakingparamountreachesdealtobuydreamworks), here's a story from msnbc about the sale and why Dreamworks didn't end up working out in the end (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10415568/site/newsweek/), here's a Bloomberg article (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a88Wppw7KL9g).

*Very* interesting news.

[Alex]

I thought they'd go to Universal, but regardless the writing has been on the wall for a while.

It's a good thing they environmental protests succeeded in killing the plans for the Playa Vista studio.

It's interesting that Dreamworks Animation is held up as the jewel of the acquisition (by the Newsweek article, anyway) since it has hardly had a strong track record for sucess (outside of the Shrek movies).

I wonder if this will cause a problem for the Shrek stuff at the Universal parks since Paramount owns some parks of its own.

[CoasterMatt]

I wonder if this will cause a problem for the Shrek stuff at the Universal parks since Paramount owns some parks of its own.

I doubt that, there's plenty of Spongebob Squarepants stuff at the Paramount Parks and Universal Studios as well; in Australia, the Shrek 4D attraction is at Warner Bros. Movie World. Licensing is a fun thing :)