Founding and Universal distribution (1994–2005) The original company was founded following
Jeffrey Katzenberg's resignation from
the Walt Disney Company in 1994. Katzenberg approached director
Steven Spielberg and music executive
David Geffen about forming a live-action and animation film studio, which had not been done in decades due to the risk and expense, but all three were very successful. They agreed on three conditions: They would make fewer than nine movies a year, they would be free to work for other studios if they chose, and they would go home in time for dinner. They officially founded DreamWorks SKG on October 12, 1994, with financial backing of $33 million from each of the three partners plus $500 million from
Microsoft co-founder
Paul Allen, and $300 million from
CJ Group heiress
Miky Lee, giving the CJ Group an 11% stake in DreamWorks; the deal was also initially understood to include distribution rights to DreamWorks films across Asia excluding Japan, although CJ ultimately handled rights for only China, South Korea and Hong Kong, with all other international territories handled by
United International Pictures (UIP). Their new studio was based at offices on the
Universal Studios Lot, in the same bungalow as
Amblin Entertainment. Despite access to
sound stages and
sets, DreamWorks preferred to film motion pictures
on location. Usually, however, the company would film in a soundstage or set in a
major studio. Shortly after DreamWorks was founded, the media dubbed Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen as "the three amigos". Despite Geffen's initial investment, it was reported in October 1994 that DreamWorks would only produce live-action and animated films, television programs and interactive entertainment. The company eventually expanded into music once Geffen stepped down from Geffen Records in April 1995, and Ostin would be hired as leader of DreamWorks' music operations that October. By 1998, DreamWorks was labelled as "multifaceted entertainment", with the company describing its ambition in 1997 as being to nurture creative breakthroughs in "every field" of entertainment. In December 1994,
DreamWorks Television was formed after DreamWorks agreed to a $200 million seven-year television production joint venture with
Capital Cities/ABC. The company was set up to produce series for broadcast networks, cable channels and first run syndication, with no
first-look guarantee for
ABC, but financial incentives favored the network. Their first show,
Champions, was scheduled as a mid-season replacement for ABC. Dan McDermott was named the division's chief executive in June 1995. DreamWorks Television's first success was
Spin City on ABC, In 2002, the DreamWorks joint venture agreement with ABC ended. That agreement was replaced by a development agreement with
NBC, with a first look clause. The same year,
DreamWorks Interactive, a computer and video game developer and
joint venture between DreamWorks and
Microsoft, was founded. DreamWorks Interactive was intended to eventually form synergies with the animation, film and television divisions of DreamWorks, with Geffen speculating in April 1995 that it could also possibly form synergies with DreamWorks' upcoming music division. With DreamWorks losing interest in maintaining a video game division,
Electronic Arts (EA)
acquired the Los Angeles studio of DreamWorks Interactive from DreamWorks and Microsoft on February 24, 2000, acquiring the
intellectual property and rights of the acclaimed series
Medal of Honor from Microsoft/DreamWorks. In June 1995, DreamWorks announced that it had signed a $1 billion deal with
MCA Inc. (then parent company of
Universal Pictures) to distribute its theatrical releases in other countries and its home video releases worldwide over 10 years, while DreamWorks itself would distribute them for the company as a film production label in America. MCA also bought a 2% stake in the company for $54 million. In 1996, the company's record label,
DreamWorks Records, was founded, the first project of which was
George Michael's album
Older. The first band signed to the label was
eels, who released their debut album
Beautiful Freak that year. DreamWorks Records went on to sign established artists for their label, including the
alternative rock act
Morphine, comedian
Chris Rock (as a spoken word artist) and
Henry Rollins (as both a spoken word artist and a member of
Rollins Band). The label helped launch the careers of artists such as
Alien Ant Farm,
Elliott Smith,
Nelly Furtado and
Papa Roach. Once the main film division officially commenced in 1997, the label started releasing numerous soundtrack compilation albums for live-action and animated DreamWorks films, including
American Beauty,
Road Trip,
Shrek,
Small Soldiers and
The Prince of Egypt, among others. These albums mostly consisted of songs from artists signed to DreamWorks Records, with the films themselves also using songs from DreamWorks artists; an example being
American Beauty, which had eels' song "
Cancer for the Cure" and Elliot Smith's song "Because" in both the soundtrack album and the film. The label's most commercially successful release was Papa Roach's
Infest, which sold 7 million units on the back of the
rap rock movement, while some of the label's highest-charting songs included Nelly Furtado's "
I'm Like a Bird" and Alien Ant Farm's cover of
Michael Jackson's "
Smooth Criminal". Commercially, the record company as a whole never lived up to expectations, and was sold in November 2003 to
Universal Music Group, In 1997, DreamWorks Pictures released its first three feature films,
The Peacemaker, a film about terrorism;
Amistad, Spielberg's first film for the studio about an African slave rebellion and the aftermath of the massacre; and
Mouse Hunt, the studio's first family film about two brothers trying to fight a mischievous mouse. All three of these films were relatively successful, managing to outgross their budgets by moderate margins, with
Mouse Hunt being the most profitable of the three.
Amistad's score was composed by
John Williams, a frequent Spielberg collaborator who also composed the music used for DreamWorks Pictures' opening logo. This logo debuted in
The Peacemaker, the first of the three films to be released, and has appeared on all live-action DreamWorks releases since, as well as on all DreamWorks Animation releases between 1998 and 2003. Williams' score for
Amistad and
Hans Zimmer's score for
The Peacemaker were both released on albums by DreamWorks Records in 1997, although starting in 1998, the label usually only released background score albums for DreamWorks' most high-profile titles, such as
Thomas Newman's score for
American Beauty and Williams' score for
Saving Private Ryan. DreamWorks Interactive did not create video game tie-ins for
The Peacemaker,
Amistad or
Mouse Hunt, and 1998's
Small Soldiers was the only DreamWorks title to ever be directly adapted into a video game by DreamWorks Interactive. In 1998, the
United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lawsuit against DreamWorks for trademark infringement by Dreamwerks Production Group, Inc., a company mostly specializing in
Star Trek conventions. The same year, DreamWorks Animation produced its first two full-length animated features,
Antz and
The Prince of Egypt, which were distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. DreamWorks Pictures continued to distribute DreamWorks Animation productions through their distribution name until 2004. DreamWorks Animation films were generally targeted towards younger audiences, in contrast to the more adult-oriented live-action DreamWorks films, including films with strong sexual elements such as
American Beauty and
Road Trip/
EuroTrip, which shared the same branding through to 2004. DreamWorks also had another division called
DreamWorks Television Animation, which in 1998 produced
Toonsylvania and
Invasion America. However, it quickly folded and the later animated show
Alienators: Evolution Continues (based on the 2001 live-action DreamWorks film
Evolution) was instead handled by the main DreamWorks Television division, in association with
DIC Entertainment and other parties. Michael Jackson's brother
Jermaine Jackson subsequently claimed in 2003 that DreamWorks' icon of a boy fishing and sitting on a moon crescent was plagiarized from the entrance to Jackson's
Neverland Ranch. Spielberg was a friend of Jackson during the 1980s and appeared in his "
Liberian Girl" music video. This was among the only animated content that
Paramount Pictures acquired from DreamWorks when its parent company
Viacom purchased the live-action film division and television division in 2006. At the
71st Academy Awards in March 1999, DreamWorks Pictures' film
Saving Private Ryan was the overwhelming frontrunner for the
Best Picture Oscar. Directed by company co-founder Steven Spielberg, the film had received critical praise for its authentic portrayal of
World War II, and was a commercial success. However, in one of the most famous upsets in Academy history, the award was instead given to romantic comedy
Shakespeare in Love, from Disney-owned
Miramax, a studio which won numerous other Oscars in the 1990s and 2000s. The loss is widely attributed to an aggressive and unprecedented awards campaign by Miramax and its head,
Harvey Weinstein. It included a reported "whisper campaign" to downplay the merits of
Saving Private Ryan. Ironically,
Shakespeare in Love and
Saving Private Ryan both ended up becoming part of the same corporate umbrella via Paramount Pictures' acquisition of the live-action DreamWorks film library in 2006, and its acquisition of the Miramax library in 2020. Following its defeat to Miramax, DreamWorks won three consecutive Academy Awards for Best Picture between 2000 and 2002, for
American Beauty,
Gladiator and
Beautiful Mind (the latter two were co-productions with Universal Pictures). By this point, DreamWorks were considered to be the first new major
Hollywood motion picture studio since
RKO Pictures was founded in 1928.
Go Fish Pictures, a division of DreamWorks with the objective to distribute
art-house,
independent and
foreign films, was founded in 2000. The division experienced success with the
anime films
Millennium Actress (2003) and
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), respectively, which led them to venture into releasing live-action films, with the release of
The Chumscrubber. However,
The Chumscrubber was a commercial and critical failure, which led DreamWorks to shut down the division in 2007 shortly before the release of the Japanese film
Casshern (which was distributed by DreamWorks). The library of Go Fish Pictures was included when Paramount Pictures acquired DreamWorks' live-action film library in 2006, even though it mainly consisted of the American distribution rights to the aforementioned anime titles. In 2000, DreamWorks was planning on building a studio
backlot after buying 1,087 acres of land in the
Playa Vista area in Los Angeles. It was to be complete with 18
sound stages, with many office buildings and a lake. There would also be new homes, schools, churches, and museums. The project was to be completed in 2001, but was canceled for financial reasons. In April 2001, DreamWorks and Universal Pictures (through its new parent company
Vivendi Universal) announced that they had extended their distribution agreement for an additional five years, following the commercial successes of
Gladiator and
Meet the Parents the year prior, both of which were co-produced by DreamWorks and Universal. In January 2002, DreamWorks signed a deal with In Demand. For the period beginning October 1, 2004, to January 31, 2006, DreamWorks Pictures distributed its films in the North American domestic theatrical and worldwide television market, with international theatrical and worldwide home entertainment distribution by Universal Pictures. On October 27, 2004, DreamWorks Animation was spun off into a separate public company. David Geffen admitted that DreamWorks came close to bankruptcy twice. Under Katzenberg's watch, the studio suffered a $125 million loss on the 2003 animated film
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, In 2005, out of their two large budget pictures,
War of the Worlds was produced as a joint effort with Paramount Pictures which was the first to reap a significant amount of profits, while
The Island bombed at the domestic box office but turned a profit internationally through
Warner Bros. Pictures. The 2003
Bo Welch film,
The Cat In The Hat also released in this period and was a critical and commercial failure.
Paramount ownership (2005–2008) In December 2005, it was announced the
original Viacom, the then-parent of Paramount Pictures, agreed to purchase the live-action studio, still keeping the original name and producing/distribution name. The deal was valued at approximately $1.6 billion, an amount that included about $400 million in debt assumptions. Throughout most of 2005, DreamWorks Pictures was widely expected to be acquired by newly formed
NBC Universal, parent of Universal Pictures and majority owned by
General Electric (GE) (with the remainder owned by
Vivendi as a result of GE's acquisition of a majority stake in that company's
Vivendi Universal division which included Universal Pictures and related assets and merger of it with their NBC division to form NBC Universal). The transaction was viewed by industry analysts as a natural fit due to Spielberg's decades-long history with Universal Pictures and the fact that DreamWorks had utilized the Universal Studios lot for its headquarters and international distribution since its founding. As talks with NBC Universal stalled, Viacom unexpectedly entered the bidding. Led by Paramount's new Chairman
Brad Grey, they moved aggressively to propose their own offer in early December 2005. DreamWorks accepted Viacom's offer on December 9, 2005, with the deal being announced to the media two days later. In a public statement from December 2005, Spielberg said, "due to my very long history and my loyalty to Universal, I was saddened that after long negotiations and many compromises, we were unable to come to terms with Universal's parent company, GE." Regarding NBC Universal/GE, Geffen said in December 2005, "I think they thought we had no choice, and were going to squeeze us and squeeze us. After a year of dealing with them, they still did not have a concluded, finished contract ready to sign." DreamWorks Pictures would briefly become a semi-autonomous label of Paramount Pictures. A key reason for Viacom's acquisition was due to a severe shortage in Paramount's own film production pipeline for 2006–2007, after Grey's new regime canceled many pre-existing projects. Spielberg and Geffen were still involved with the company under Paramount, although Geffen eventually departed in 2008 since he was interested in reinventing himself as a
newspaper mogul. Katzenberg was now working at the newly independent DreamWorks Animation, and remained there until its sale to NBCUniversal in 2016, which left Spielberg as the only one of the three founders currently involved with either DreamWorks company. Viacom's 2006 purchase of DreamWorks Pictures included a separate deal for Paramount to distribute new films by DreamWorks Animation over a six-year period. Starting in September 2006, DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures went on to co-release films such as
Blades of Glory,
Disturbia,
Dreamgirls,
The Last Kiss,
Tropic Thunder and the 2007 live-action adaptation of
Transformers. Despite internal tensions between DreamWorks and Paramount, the partnership led to Paramount becoming the highest grossing US studio of 2007. A point of contention was that Viacom owner
Sumner Redstone viewed DreamWorks purely as a label of Paramount Pictures, whereas Spielberg did not view it as such, even resisting having new DreamWorks films being branded as Paramount films. In most of the Paramount-distributed DreamWorks films from this period, Paramount's logo only briefly appears at the very end of the credits, with the films usually opening with DreamWorks' 1997 logo. Notable exceptions are
Dreamgirls and
Transformers, which feature both the Paramount logo and the DreamWorks logo at the beginning. It was Spielberg who insisted, as part of the 2006 sale, that Paramount's logo appear on DreamWorks' movies after the credits to give DreamWorks' own banner top billing. Viacom held a minority 49% stake, while the other parties, led by billionaire
George Soros, held a majority 51% stake. The film library (consisting of 59 titles) was valued at $900 million, and selling the majority stake helped Viacom finance the acquisition of the live-action studio itself. On February 8, 2010, Viacom repurchased Soros' controlling stake in the DreamWorks Pictures library for around $400 million. Several notable DreamWorks films such as
Cast Away (which DreamWorks controlled international rights) and
American Beauty were not released on
Blu-ray by
Paramount Home Entertainment until they bought back Soros' controlling stake. However, they reissued certain other live-action DreamWorks films from 1997 to 2005 prior to buying back the stake. With only a few exceptions, Paramount Pictures continues to control the rights to all films and television shows DreamWorks produced during their partnership, in addition to controlling the live-action film and television titles DreamWorks released prior to 2006. Paramount have also retained the film rights to the
Hasbro-owned
Transformers franchise, going on to release further films without DreamWorks' involvement. Initially, DreamWorks films released on home video were still branded similar to
DreamWorks Home Entertainment releases and did not feature Paramount's logo on the packaging. Later home video releases have since incorporated Paramount's branding, including pre-2006 titles which Paramount had no involvement with. They do not hold the rights to the DreamWorks Animation films released prior to 2006, although they temporarily controlled the home media rights to the pre-2006 DreamWorks Animation library.
Reliance-Spielberg joint venture and Disney distribution (2008–2015) In June 2008, it was reported that DreamWorks Pictures was looking for financing that would allow it to continue operations, but as an independent production company, once its deal with Paramount ended later that year. Several public equity funds were approached for financing, including
Blackstone Group, Fuse Global,
TPG Capital and several others, but all passed on the deal given their understanding of the Hollywood markets. On September 22, 2008, it was announced that DreamWorks closed a deal with Indian investment firm
Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group to create a $1.2 billion stand-alone production company and end its ties with Paramount. In January 2009, Spielberg entered a licensing agreement with DreamWorks Animation to use the DreamWorks trademarks, logo, and name for film productions and releases. As part of the 2008 separation agreement with Paramount/Viacom, they retained an option to co-finance and co-distribute 15–20 upcoming DreamWorks Pictures projects. As a result of this deal, Paramount Pictures currently own the rights to most live-action DreamWorks films that were released between 1997 and 2010. On February 9, 2009, DreamWorks Pictures entered into a long-term, 30-picture distribution deal with
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, by which DreamWorks' films would be released through the
Touchstone Pictures banner, with Disney collecting a 10% distribution fee. Despite signing the deal in early 2009, DreamWorks Pictures only started releasing films through Disney/Touchstone in 2011. The deal also included co-funding via a $175 million loan by
Walt Disney Studios to DreamWorks for production and access to slots in Disney's pay television agreement, then with
Starz. DreamWorks raised $325 million from Reliance Entertainment and an additional $325 million in debt in 2009. On August 18, 2009, DreamWorks and Reliance signed a three-year, $825 million pact for up to six films a year. DreamWorks' slate of films in 2011,
I Am Number Four,
Cowboys & Aliens, and
Fright Night failed, while
The Help,
Real Steel and Spielberg's
War Horse had success at the box office. This left DreamWorks so financially drained that by 2011, DreamWorks was seeking additional funding from Reliance. Reliance gave a $200 million investment on April 10, 2012. Under the deal, DreamWorks Pictures scaled back production to three films per year and sought co-financiers on big budget films, such as
20th Century Fox, which would later that year enter a five-year distribution deal with DreamWorks Animation, would co-finance and handle international distribution for
Lincoln and
Bridge of Spies. DreamWorks continued to have Disney distribute and market their films.
Amblin Partners venture and return to Universal (2016–present) On September 2, 2015, it was reported that DreamWorks and Disney would not renew their distribution deal, which was set to expire in August 2016, with
The Light Between Oceans being released in September as the final DreamWorks film distributed by Disney under their original distribution agreement. During that time, DreamWorks was in early negotiations with Universal Pictures to distribute its upcoming films. undee subsidiary DreamWorks II Distribution Co. LLC from DreamWorks and Reliance on December 11, 2015. On December 16, 2015, Spielberg, Reliance,
Entertainment One and
Participant Media partnered to launch the content production company
Amblin Partners, relegating DreamWorks to a brand for adult-themed films produced under the new company. In addition to DreamWorks, the new company also would produce films under the Amblin Entertainment and Participant banners. On the same day, Amblin Partners announced a five-year distribution deal with Universal, under which the company's films would be distributed and marketed by either the main Universal label or its specialty label,
Focus Features. 2016's
The Girl on the Train was the first film released under the new agreement, It had been delayed due to complications arising from the DreamWorks/Viacom split. which reunited a minority percentage of the live-action DreamWorks label with its former DreamWorks Animation division, which Universal acquired the year prior in 2016 and eventually handled distribution that began with
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in 2019, after DreamWorks Animation's distribution deal with 20th Century Fox expired with the release of
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie in 2017. In 2020,
Netflix released the film
The Trial of the Chicago 7, which was a co-production between DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Pictures and several other parties. This was one of the 15–20 DreamWorks projects that Paramount originally considered co-financing/co-distributing in late 2008–2010, as part of the post-split deal they made with DreamWorks Pictures. In 2021, Paramount launched their subscription streaming service
Paramount+, which includes the 1997–2010 DreamWorks Pictures films owned by Paramount Pictures. Additionally, Paramount included these films on their free streaming service
Pluto TV, which also includes certain DreamWorks Television shows owned by Paramount. Disney's subscription streaming service
Disney+ launched in 2019, and has included the 2011–2016 DreamWorks Pictures films owned by Touchstone. However, this was mainly in international markets where their more adult-focused streaming service
Hulu was unavailable, with Hulu including most of the Touchstone-owned DreamWorks films. == Logo ==