Will Disney buy DWA? No! Universal did!

[ShyViolet]

Re: KFP 3 plot.

Oh man.

It sounds bad, bad, bad. Nothing like I expected. The spiritual reverence of 1 and 2 doesn't seem to be much of a factor here, just more DWA "wackiness". Actually sounds like a retread of Shrek 3 and 4... A bunch of unlikely heroes/funny characters get together to fight an evil villain and much hilarity ensues...etc...Yawn.

Well, hopefully it'll at least look great.

[Dacey]

I think it's really early to judge, Vi. Don't forget the original title for KFP 2 was "The Kaboom of Doom." And that sounds really stupid when taken out of context.

My ONLY concern is China's involvement, which may result in all of the panda characters having to be seen as saints!

[ShyViolet]

I hope so, Dacey. I guess it was the description of many different Pandas that made me think of all the ogres in Shrek 4! None of them were very interesting as far as I could see.

Hopefully this will be better.

[ShyViolet]

Gosh darn it:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/bu ... ?referrer=

[EricJ]

Gosh darn it:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/bu ... ?referrer=

Oh, phew, Home's back to being a "flop" again, now things should get back to normal.
(Told ya it was just a drop of water in the family-film desert.)

Questioned about whether the movie industry should speed up the release of films on DVD — a contentious topic among theater owners — he declined to answer. “That’s a really big, juicy question,” he said. “I’m going to stick to little old DreamWorks.”

After all, "Disk sales are dead", aren't they, Jeffrey?

[Ben]

Well, i wouldn't say Its gone back to being a "flop" again, but I did say that Home wasn't going to be as strong internationally as it was in the States, and I didn't even expect it to be that big in the States, which I do admit I was wrong with. There's lots of reasons for Home hitting as well as it did, but equally I still couldn't see it playing that well in Europe, particularly Western Europe markets like the UK, France and Germany.

The two big points to take away from this story are, however, that even if Home had been a $500m global hit, it was never going to mean that DWA was in the clear, due to their debt from the past few releases, but they might have just broken even. It's going to take another one or two Home-sized releases (and hopefully even bigger) to get them properly back on track.

The other thing we learn here: absolutely incomprehensibly, HOW did this thing cost NEARLY $300m to make and market!?

(Love how they make a pointed point of saying that JK "steered clear of his trademark grand pronouncements about the state of Hollywood", though. How well they know him!)

[EricJ]

After all, "Disk sales are dead", aren't they, Jeffrey?

(Love how they make a pointed point of saying that JK "steered clear of his trademark grand pronouncements about the state of Hollywood", though. How well they know him!)

Whew, they finally caught on to Alibi Ike! I can remember the days when they used to believe him, those were scary times.

[ShyViolet]

DWA to showcase how their films are made:

http://m.todayonline.com/entertainment/ ... s-are-made

[ShyViolet]

Okay...this sounds way too much like Home and Guardians smushed together!

http://deadline.com/2015/05/jason-reitm ... 201433534/

[Ben]

Smushed? That sounds nice.

[ShyViolet]

Ex-Pixar executive Robin Chandler to join DWA as head of theatrical publicity:

http://deadline.com/2015/06/former-pixa ... 201436629/

[Jpcase]

Dang! Jason Reitman?

I guess I can see how the story might wind up feeling repetitive, but since when has that not been a problem for DreamWorks? I actually think that this one sounds fairly creative, and while Reitman isn't one of the most amazing directors ever, he's certainly done some good work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but outside of Zemeckis and Spielberg's forays into motion capture, I'm pretty sure that this will mark the first time that a filmmaker has gone into animation, already having been nominated for a Best Director Oscar (Wes Anderson only had writing noms prior to last year's Grand Budapest Hotel, and the highest directing nomination that Tim Burton has ever received was at the Golden Globes). Kind of a minor point I guess, but it still seems semi-historic.

Admittedly, Reitman's career has been in a bit of a down-turn lately. It may be that he doesn't bring anything remarkable to the table. All the same, I'm excited to see how this goes!

[ShyViolet]

Even with a talented outside director the plot just sounds so stale. It resembles a film that had middling success, and another one that just plain-out flopped. Two strikes against it if you ask me. Even if done in an original and creative way, I don't see people taking much notice of this, especially after Pixar took a huge risk and apparently hit it it BIG with Inside Out!


Guardians, after all, was very original in some ways with many creative ideas. But the plot was all over the place. And now a film about an outsider who wants a best friend that will believe in him? Sorry, but no. It doesn't mean that this film won't make any money--hey, it might even strike some kind of box office gross, as Home did. But DWA has to start taking some creative risks if they want people to sit up and take notice of them again!

[Jpcase]

All true, but I guess I just feel like DreamWorks has barely taken any creative risks at all in the past decade or so. Even most of their better films, like Over the Hedge and Kung Fu Panda, have hardly been bold, original ideas. So while I'd love to see DreamWorks do something totally outside of the box, I can't say that the plot description has me all that worried.

Besides, it's based on an award-winning book, so the underlying concept probably isn't bad at all. Yes, DreamWorks might lose sight of whatever made the book special and morph it into something that feels generic, but I'm willing to give just as much weight to the possibility that Reitman has an interesting and unique take on the story.

[EricJ]

Dang! Jason Reitman?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but outside of Zemeckis and Spielberg's forays into motion capture

And Zack Snyder's and George Miller's, who everyone (including me) tends to forget.

Even so, the idea of "Wow, we got the director of Juno to do our CGI movie!" sounds an awful lot like that "Wow, we got Jerry Seinfeld to do a kids movie for us!" that will forever be carved on DWA's tombstone. I can't even say for sure whether Jason even knows how to direct a kids' movie, and seeing Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze try to indulge their "inner children" for book adaptations, I'm not putting any bets down either.
If you're in indie films, your inner child has long since been buried underneath a Starbucks.

Which means that DWA haven't escaped their own worst enemy, namely that Katzenberg still sees movies as "deals", trying to persuade us of his own happiness that he got Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller to be in it, but still can't quite fathom the "heart" thing that makes us care about the characters once the film actually gets made.
(Like the Poor Picked-On Imaginary Friend, continuing the unbroken string of Dreamworks Bully-Victims.)