It was once a cornerstone of Jeffrey Katzenberg's cunning plan to make DreamWorks Animation a medium-sized conglomerate, but now it's gone:
... Oriental DreamWorks, which started out five years ago as a joint venture with DreamWorks Animation, is now independent. ...
CMC Capital Partners, which invests in companies across the spectrum of content, platform, technology and services in media and entertainment, bought NBCUniversal’s 45 per cent stake and renamed it Pearl Studio.
... "Full ownership will allow us to be even closer to the China market, to leverage CMC’s industry value chain and [resources] in the media sector,” CMC's chief executive Frank Zhu said in an interview. Details of the deal were not disclosed, but the joint venture was valued at US$350 million in 2012. ...
China’s animation industry – film ticket sales and ancillary businesses such as product merchandising and spin-off productions – is forecast to grow at an annual compound rate of more than 10 per cent. ...
The thing about cartoons? They're highly profitable, but you have to make a movie that audiences want to see, and that's often tricky.
Too many times over the past quarter century, companies with dreams of big glittery profits dancing in their heads have plunged into the animation biz only to get their financial backsides handed to them. That first feature, produced with great effort (the one they're convinced will make them a mint) crashes and burns at the global box office. And the dreams blow away like powdery ash.
It's not enough to make a pretty CG feature with characters that move and talk. There also needs to be a story people get wrapped up in. That part is harder to pull off than many budding film creators imagine. But good luck to Pearl Studio; may all your animated features be blockbusters.
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