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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, June 18th, 2010 - Comments Off on DreamWorks At Disney… One More Time
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DreamWorks At Disney… One More Time

It’s always interesting to see a story I wrote six months ago come out again as new news.
But more to the point, the “new” piece is in need of some editing.
“(T)he power trio of Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg took $500 million from Paul Allen to create the entertainment company of the future.”
The trio also put in $100 million between them. And “took” is an odd word, as the process of paying back Paul Allen’s investment is one of the most significant drivers of DreamWorks’ history over the last 6 years.
“Paramount sold off the controlling interest to the library to a group led by George Soros for $900 million shortly after it purchased DreamWorks in 2005”
As it has now been explained, Soros didn’t buy the library for $900 million, but took a 51% equity position and after five years, Paramount paid him $400 million to acquire the stake, leaving him whole with some small profit and Paramount with 100% of the library as of February this year.
In other words, he floated them the $900 million against library revenues and when the revenues didn’t return his $900 million and the value of the library was set well below $900 million, Paramount made him whole. Was this the agreement in 2005? Probably. But the ever-stock-price-vigilant Viacom didn’t want to be perceived as paying $1.5 billion for DreamWorks. So they muddied the waters with a bet Soros didn’t really win on, but couldn’t lose.
“The studio has modest goals to produce about half a dozen movies a year, a few of them tentpoles, the rest of the slate filled out by genre movies.”
This is more of a clarification than a correction, but according to the principles, the studio is not planning for what would normally be called tentpoles… if you define tentoples as expensive films… say, over $100 million. If DW ever decide to do a mega-movie/tentpole, like a Transformers-type film, they will have to find a financial partner to take on a significant part of the risk. It should also be noted that the studio is not expecting to be up to six films a year until 2012, though it is possible they could rev up to that in 2011.
“Spielberg will retain a producer credit on

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon