Steven Spielberg has $1 billion dream
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?Steven Spielberg aims to raise more than $1 billion in third-party financing to reinvent DreamWorks as a separate company that once again owns the movies it makes.
As for distribution, Spielberg wants to bolt his roost at Paramount for Universal, which wants to land Spielberg and DreamWorks after losing out to Paramount in that quest a couple years ago. But on recommendation from his advisers, Spielberg has allowed a bidding war to begin among studios for the rights to distribute future DreamWorks movies.
The chief suitors other than Paramount: Universal, Disney and Fox.
Warner Bros. has sat out the competition so far despite previous expectations that the studio would seek a relationship with DreamWorks if Spielberg and company were to leave Paramount. Industry betting runs heavily against Spielberg’s staying put at Paramount, with the related question of where he and the DreamWorks film label land considered a simple matter of who will offer sufficiently attractive terms to attract Spielberg, chief Stacey Snider and their brand.
“Stacey is the next generation, and Steven is very committed to her,” said one participant in DreamWorks strategy meetings.
Spielberg’s contract runs until 2010, but he can terminate it early at year’s end. Snider and DreamWorks chairman David Geffen have similar escape clauses in their deals with Par, while about 100 other DreamWorks employees theoretically would be unaffected by departures among the top execs.
- From THR