Paramount And Dreamworks Finalize Separation And Future Joint Projects; David Geffen Ends DW Relationship

COMMENTS (18)

• Spielberg has not done anything of use in years. What was with that movie where Forrest Gump was stuck in an airport? Good lord, pure torture.

  Comment by Mike Sandberg — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 12:36pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Now that America has run out of money thanks to the brazen bank robbers of Wall Street, Hollywood will have to turn to Bollywood for finance.

  India is no longer a poor country. It is more wealthy than America dollar for dollar because it has a conservative banking system which is very solid and better run and does not take risks.

  India has bigger middle class as percentage of of its population than US, no sub-prime mortgages which virtually bankrupted the mighty USA. Welcome to the machine.

  Comment by Anil Vadgama — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 1:12pm PDT  Reply to this post

• India no longer poor — huh? Left the big cities — horrors that they are — and gone into the countryside, Anil? Ever?

  Comment by Banjo — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 2:51pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Where’s the drama?

  Come on, you can’t order coffee in Hollywood without a multi-million dollar lawsuit! What’s with all this deftly avoiding crap?

  Dreamworks and its relationship with Reliance reminds me of that speech Ned Beatty made in Network. They’ve made billions off of America, now it’s time to put it back. Ebb & flow, tidal gravity, ecological balance and all that.

  And looking at the cat-fight brewing over the supposedly “bankrupt” Wachovia bank and its $270 billion in allegedly “worthless” mortgages, I think the credit crunch will start to settle down soon enough, and India can make their money work for them in America.

  Comment by Furious D — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 2:52pm PDT  Reply to this post

• The problem with Hollywood financing… is Hollywood itself. Wall Street cannot even come close to comparing. Studios, agents and accountants here are the real robber barons.

  One day – soon – people will realize that the system in Hollywood is so broken not even Hollywood invests in it’s own product.

  In the last ten years, US Businesses and banks pulled their financing out of Hollywood and this town has then ran to Japan, England, Ireland, Central Europe and now India to raise money as each regional cabal/entity realizes how screwed it gets and withdraws before it completes the term – the Irish money came and went in 14 months, not the 48 that was the initial deal.

  The problem is not so much with the quality of entertainment, but the quality of business. This system exists to suck out every dollar before and after it is on screen and since the Business knows lasting financial relationships aren’t going to be there it uses that as motivation to pull even more money out… and no one will even be accountable since the studios themselves get to write and re-write the accounting and never share it, even with the stakeholders.

  It’s time to run Hollywood like a business instead of a rapist.

  Comment by WhateverMan — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 5:36pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Response to comment “Now that America has run out of money thanks to the brazen bank robbers of Wall Street,…” by Anil Vadgama

  The financial crisis wasn’t caused by “brazen bank robbers of Wall Street”, but by misguided radical leftwing socialistic policies of the Democrat Party leadership. They have enacted so many unnecessary and harmful laws, rule and regulations since 1933, that we, the taxpaying citizens, are now enslaved by those laws, rules and regulations. For your information, the current crisis was started in 1992 when the Democrat Party enacted legislation that required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give loans to anyone. This was done because of the alleged evil of “redlining” areas where people who lived in those areas were considered bad risks; in other words, it was believed they could not repay the loans, because their income was insufficient. Of course, a mortgage loan requires insurance, so AIG and other insurers were forced to provide insurance for bad loans. If you want to know the names of the Democrats who caused the problem today, just look at the leaders of the Democrat Party, such as Barney Franks, Maxine Walters, Christoper Dodd, and the “black” caucus.

  Keep in mind that all of us, in order to be eligible for the “benefits” of a program, have to give up our freedom to make decisions for ourselves, and submit to whatever the bureaucrats have decided is in our best interest. Is this the kind of future you want for the people of this once great nation? What will you do when a bureaucrat decides you do not qualify for a “benefit”?

  It amazes me that men and women in the entertainment industy who make millions of dollars a year in one of the most competitive and capitalistic industries in the world, support a party that will supposedly “tax the rich” to make them pay “their fair share”.

  Comment by RRWConservative — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 7:43pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Funny stuff RRWConservative. 1933? Why don’t you blame Napolean for a run on pointy hats?

  Even if it was 1933, that is a 74 year succesful run. Name any organization that would think a 74 year run was bad. In Hollywood 4 years is a lifetime.

  Have you ever heard of CDS or Credit Default Swaps? Did all those poor people force Wall Street to take the riskest loans and rpackage them as safe and sell them for a profit?

  “The bank then identified the riskiest 10 percent tranche and sold it to investors in what was called the Broad Index Securitized Trust.” Trust?

  “There’s a reason Warren Buffett called these instruments “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

  http://www.newsweek.com/id/161199

  CDSs were kept off the books even though they were 4 times as big as the stock market.

  Were all these firms complaining for the last few years as they sold this crap as gold? Were they refusing their bonuses?

  I worked for one of these firms and I can tell you the traders were laughing as they repackaged this crap to the suckers.

  Comment by topset72 — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 8:34pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Anil, have you been smoking some Indian crack? India on its best day has a very small middle class as a percentage of its population, a middle class that would be considered below the poverty level in the US. You don’t need a lot of of mortgages in India to finance mud huts and tin shacks. And now a bunch of Indian suckers just bought into a bad deal — welcome to the machine!

  Comment by Brad — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 9:47pm PDT  Reply to this post

• so wait… does this mean DreamWorks has nothing in development?

  Comment by Confused — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 10:06pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Poor Mr. Conservative up there is melting down. Blaming the New Deal of 1933 for the current woes caused by derelict bankers of the last 10 years…Those laws were put in place when the country had 25% unemployment and and 65% of the United States had lost their life savings due to bank closures. The mortality rate had doubled and the suicide rate had quadrupled. Those laws were put in place to regulate a banking systems that all but bankrupt America and as a result put the American population in grave danger. Todays woes are not from those laws or from the democratic party.

  Comment by Cindy Loo Hoo — Sunday October 5, 2008 @ 10:20pm PDT  Reply to this post

• topset72: all that repackaged “crap” was done because it was “guaranteed” by taxpayers, via (mostly) Democrats and the Liberal groups RRWConservative identified. The only REASON that repackaging was even possible as a profit process was due to the government guarantees. Without those guarantees, no “crap” profiteering. Thus, it’s reasonable and accurate to lay blame where this fiasco lies and that’s with the “social programs” demanded by Democrats (which means, the taxpayers get [and got] the bill).

  Comment by Bubbala — Monday October 6, 2008 @ 1:26am PDT  Reply to this post

• They may have $1.5B in financing but without a library of films to generate some cash in the mean time they are going to struggle.

  Unline the likes of Summit or Lionsgate I don’t see this new DW trying to make money with lower budget Harold and Kumar-esque comedies and horrors aimed at the teen audience.

  All it will take is for one expensive Speilberg directed, Kurtzman/Orci scripted to underperform and every will have their knives out.

  In saying that I do hope that this new DW can make it. In this day and age people need as buyers in the market as they can get.

  Comment by Warner Borg — Monday October 6, 2008 @ 2:34am PDT  Reply to this post

• 1- Spielberg’s made one good movie in the past ten years or so: “Munich.”

  2- The nutball conservative’s laughable rant above reminds us that Democrats are not completely blameless in the financial mess that will yet threaten our great country in ways we cannot even begin to fathom, but otherwise he’s just another brainwashed hater of humanity, a man who sees capitalism as the ultimate Darwinian test (yet likely mocks evolution). You are a cold man, sir, and your ideas are bankrupt and have been revealed as empty lies. Shame on you.

  Comment by Longtime Observer, Now Removed — Monday October 6, 2008 @ 3:28am PDT  Reply to this post

• This deal is so complicated, I think Paramount will be suing Dreamworks 2.0 for something within a year. I can’t imagine the new Dreamworks will work very hard with Paramount if it has a better deal with Universal. Paramount will get the future projects Universal doesn’t want, and most of the current slate of projects will probably never go into production. Then it will be lawsuit time.

  Comment by Dan Zee — Monday October 6, 2008 @ 7:58am PDT  Reply to this post

• so why does so many Bollywood films suck?

  India is no longer a poor country. It is more wealthy than America dollar for dollar because it has a conservative banking system which is very solid and better run and does not take risks.

  India has bigger middle class as percentage of of its population than US, no sub-prime mortgages which virtually bankrupted the mighty USA. Welcome to the machine.

  Really, Anil? That’s bullshit. My family is from India. 80% of Indians are poor, illiterate, lower class/caste, and still live in slums (or poor villages). People like you make me sick, who want to keep claiming that India is advanced and getting richer for RICH PEOPLE, while poor Indians keep getting poorer!!!

  Comment by UGLY PUNK GURL! — Monday October 6, 2008 @ 8:10am PDT  Reply to this post

• Not only were CDSes the lynchpin of the death of the American Empire but they were carefully crafted so as to avoid ANY regulation. It was in fact an “insurance” though of course that would mean you’d have to have the money to pay if the insurer is dudded (which of course they would be when the house of cards collapses) so instead we’ll call them “swaps” and avoid all of that nastiness.

  There’s more than enough blame to go around but pleeeeeaze don’t get all sanctimonious about this being the Dems fault because of the New Deal. Jesus wept.

  Comment by PTBarnum — Monday October 6, 2008 @ 10:40am PDT  Reply to this post

• I notice that no one responded to the third paragraph of my missive, so I must assume that having bureaucrats make decisions regarding how each of us lives our lives is acceptable to most of you. (To my way of thinking, this is tantamount to acceding to your own enslavement.)

  I do consider “Wall Street” and Republicans in the Executive and Congressional branches of the federal government responsible for part of the financial crisis, because they did not vigorously oppose ill-considered Democrat legislation. I also fault Republican officeholders, because they have not governed in the manner they pledged to do for so many years.

  I did not blame the current crisis on the New Deal, but on the mind-set of Democrats since that period.

  The programs of the New Deal were not successful, as proven by the fact that there was a collapse of the economy in 1937, even after all of the spending the Democrats did in the preceding 4 years. Please read “The Forgotten Man” written by Amity Shlaes for more information.

  It is my belief that this country was founded upon the idea that an individual (e.g. Spielberg, Geffen, and Katzenberg) could achieve whatever that individual wanted to achieve, including great wealth, if that individual was willing to work diligently at obtaining an education, then work even more diligently at whatever profession that individual chose, and the individual could only do this if there was a federal government that provided for the common defense and promoted the general welfare. This was the promise and the hope, not guarantee, that brought so many industrious immigrants to this country. Unfortunately, we now have many leaders in government and fellow citizens who believe “The Government” should “provide for the general welfare and promote the common defense”, and that all of us are entitled to whatever we desire, even though we’ve done nothing to earn what we want, whether we are legal citizens or not.

  My interpretation of the phrase “promote the general welfare” means that laws are enacted and enforced to permit all of us to live together as harmoniously as possible, and to punish miscreants who do bodily harm or achieve wealth by theft or fraud. My interpretation of the phrase also includes the provision of certain infrastructure, such as roads, to enhance the ability of businesses to distribute goods. (It angers me every time I drive on the very poorly maintained streets of Los Angeles to think how our tax dollars have been squandered on unnecessary programs other than paving the streets, and even though the city budget is in the red, we have a Mayor who is promoting the idea of spending 5 billion dollars to provide “affordable” housing, when what he should be doing is working with developers so they can build a lot more housing, not just “affordable” housing. I do not doubt the 5 billion dollars would be squandered just as the money that was raised by the state for improving schools is being misspent.)

  The party that currently controls Congress – and that has done so for the better part of 75 years – has, since the campaign of 1932, been a party that proclaims wealthy people have fraudulently achieved their wealth, and are therefore evil and deserving of punishment by having their wealth taken from them, unless, of course, a wealthy person supports and contributes to the Party. (It amazes me that many of the leaders of the Democrat Party are themselves very wealthy, seem to be getting richer even though they are supposedly paying higher taxes, and yet still condemn the “rich”.) I reject this political philosophy, and consider it to be the antithesis of the American Dream and what was intended by the creation of this nation.

  I do believe the American Dream ideal being promoted by the Democrat Party will cause the collapse of this republic.

  Comment by RRWConservative — Monday October 6, 2008 @ 10:21pm PDT  Reply to this post

• This country is in a state of collapse thanks to the greed and bloodlust of you and your kind Mr. Too-Chickenshit-To-Sign-His-Own-Name!

  Comment by David Ehrenstein — Tuesday October 7, 2008 @ 1:34pm PDT  Reply to this post