Co-Production!

DreamWorks Animation/NBC-Universal/Comcast is teeing up a new animated feature, co-produced with Pearl Animation in China:

“Abominable” marks the first film from Pearl Studio, formerly known as Oriental DreamWorks, the joint venture DreamWorks Animation founder Jeffrey Katzenberg launched in 2012. ...

Now Pearl ... is looking to make its mark on the growing, increasingly global feature animation business with movies that can resonate in China and abroad. ...

The co-production model has been tried numerous times, going back to the days of hand-drawn animation. With the notable exception of Illumination Entertainment and its fusion of L.A. and Parisian animation studios, co-productions have not had gangbuster results at the global box office.

Co-productions have done fine in the lower budget, episodic TV world (it's been a way of life for decades), but it's laid an egg in the theatrical features universe. Hanna-Barbera had no luck with Page-Master in the early nineties. Disney tried and failed to do CG-animated features for the Indian market (anybody recall Roadside Romeo? Thought not.) More recently, micro-budgeted CG features have done okay in niche markets, but Illumination Entertainment Entertainment with its Despicable Me series is the first cartoon studio that has boosted jointly-produced features into the stratosphere.

DWA's Abominable, per current projections, is not slated to do anything close to what the Illumination Entertainment Entertainment blockbusters have done. But if the picture makes a tidy profit, Universal/Comcast will not be distraught with grief.