DreamWorks Animation Bids For Character Rights-Holder Classic Media: NYT

COMMENTS (21)

• Woah, DreamWorks is in for a surprise. These rights are tangled. A company I work with tried to negotiate the rights to a couple of properties a little while back, and it turned out that Classic didn’t even have the actual rights to certain properties and facets of the properties. Not sure what DreamWorks thinks they’re getting here.

  Comment by FV — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 5:49pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • It’s pretty clear things like Archie and He-Man were/are licensed from other companies. It’s also pretty clear DWA wants to be Disney, not just in movies.

    Comment by ILDC — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 6:59pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I’ve looked through the Classic Library dozens of times. Every time they come around and show us the same exact catalogue. There is nothing worth exploiting at all.

  Comment by Anonymous — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 5:52pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Actually this is a perfect fit for DreamWorks Animation.

  Comment by Anonymous — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 6:09pm PDT  Reply to this post

• they do not own Gumby nor Felix the Cat

  Comment by oldmantime — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 6:13pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Classic has a bunch of crap. But good for them for getting Dreamworks to take it off their hands… Peabody and Sherman, Lone Ranger, Where’s Waldo were the BEST properties in their collection. And those are awfully C-level. Marvel it ain’t…

  Comment by Mike — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 6:16pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Surprised Disney didn’t go after Classic Media.

  Comment by Bob — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 6:32pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I guess Sony and DWA aren’t in distribution talks.

  Comment by ILDC — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 7:20pm PDT  Reply to this post

• It looks like Katzenberg is looking for a quick way to increase Dreamworks’ catalogue of characters. Another attempt in his long list to make Dreamworks Animation more Disney-esque. It’s kind of his modus operandi.

  Comment by Jay — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 7:49pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • Katzenberg worked to make Disney into the media giant it is. It is his philosophy. He left it behind him at Disney and he brought it to Dreamworks. Nothing about this move is an imitation of anything else but the methods he has used before.

    Comment by S4 — Tuesday July 17, 2012 @ 11:06pm PDT  Reply to this post

    • He seemed fine with it just being an animation studio after it split from normal DreamWorks, which pretty much failed at being a conglomerate. It’s the focus on family entertainment that makes it seem more Disney-esque.

      Comment by ILDC — Saturday July 21, 2012 @ 10:39pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Still think Disney will go after the rest of the Henson Company one day.

  Classic Media is complicated, ’cause while it displays Archie and Fat Albert on its website, they don’t actually own the characters, they just own the old Filmation cartoons. I’m not even a huge fan of a lot of Classic’s catalogue, but they’re instantly recognizable, and exploitable. Where’s Waldo, Bullwinkle, Casper, Lassie, even VeggieTales, the list goes on. I guess they’d be adapted into more half-assed DreamWorks movies, but why not?

  Comment by Kenny — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 8:30pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • Making another VeggieTales movie kind of feels like making another Garbage Pail Kids movie.

    Comment by ILDC — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 9:25pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • There’s nothing left at Henson to buy except Fraggle Rock and Storyteller.

    Comment by Tooner — Tuesday July 17, 2012 @ 4:37am PDT  Reply to this post

• I’m pretty sure they also own the “golden books” library of titles…. There’s a bunch of stuff in there s well. Many of their other properties do have rights issues….

  SB

  Comment by Sarah B — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 8:43pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Despite the thorny rights issues and some rather vintage properties, Classic Media gives DreamWorks Animation some unpolished gems with great potential and, moreover, CM gives DWA a steady revenue stream in the hundreds of millions every year. This would let DreamWorks diversify away from being a one-trick pony that relies too much on the feast-or-famine vicissitudes of releasing a couple of mega-budget animated features per year. And one might speculate that the steady CM catalog revenue would be cheddar they don’t have to go looking for in New York, Dubai, etc.

  Comment by Johnny Ringo — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 10:20pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • If CM generated hundreds of millions a year in revenue then why is $150 million the highest bid they’ve received and why would CM even consider it?

    Comment by S4 — Tuesday July 17, 2012 @ 11:09pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Wow. So much mediocre garbage with incredibly limited merchandising potential. And if you are not exploiting the characters then isn’t it all futile?

  Comment by Karl — Monday July 16, 2012 @ 11:03pm PDT  Reply to this post

• The NYT article does not tell the whole story. When DWA unravels the chain of title to the CM properties they will find that a great many of the properties that CM lists do NOT come with remake, sequel or prequel rights. For example on Archie and Sabrina, CM only holds the rights to the old FILMATION cartoon series for the characters, which do not include any rights to do a new film or TV series, live action or otherwise. A lot of the other properties CM has do not contain a vertically integrated rights package. I think for what rights CM does actually possess $150MM is overpaying, significantly. I’m not saying that some of the properties do not have value, just at $150 million it appears that DWA is buying the proverbial “pig in a poke”.

  Comment by braded property player — Tuesday July 17, 2012 @ 7:55am PDT  Reply to this post

• They don’t even “own” some of those properties, at least not in the traditional sense. He-Man, for example, is Mattel’s baby. How would that work out?

  Comment by Brian — Tuesday July 17, 2012 @ 4:12pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I bet someone at DreamWorks is reading these comments and realizing that they need to do deeper digging into the rights situations on these properties. Not saying that Classic misrepresented themselves, but who knows. My prediction is that DreamWorks doesn’t end up buying the company. It will sell to another random group of investors (like what’s happened in the past) who fall prey to the “sales pitch.” Those investors will realize in a couple of years that this is a pile of shit, and Eric Ellenbogen will buy the company back for another discounted price, and sell it again a few years later. Notice the trend…

  Comment by Yep — Tuesday July 17, 2012 @ 4:21pm PDT  Reply to this post