DreamWorks Animation Shutdown

[mr3urious]

Holy crap! That true?

According to this source, yes it is.

http://www.rotoscopers.com/2014/08/...cing-a-mr-peabody-sherman-series-for-netflix/

 

[Drtooth]

I thought Peabody did well.....sadly Rise of the Guardians failed. I"m sorry to say this guys, but I wish movies like Madagascar 3 or whatever flopped instead, because as good as Madagascar 3 was if it failed it wouldn't stop them from making more animated comedies, the failure of Guardians meant no more movies like it in the future.

The problem is, Madagascar has a built in audience (though the Penguin movie did very week business, on the plus side it didn't seem to affect the superior Big Hero 6 much) while Guardians is a weird premise and based on a series of books no one has read or heard of. A shame, since they're written by William Joyce, who has a second career in animation (did some of the concept drawings for Robots and Meet the Robinsons). Plus, it's getting more and more obvious the Thanksgiving Weekend movie period isn't as strong as it used to be. Peabody and Sherman did so so. Mainly because it's a very American cartoon, despite the Mexican animation. Though I have no proof that it did well in Latin American Markets, the Happy Meal toys managed to get released there and some parts of Europe, so I guess that's where the movie did any international business. It made back its budget, anyway.

I doubt they'd look into Madagascar 4. There's no story left there. Penguins actually is a sequel, but in terms of it happening canonically after they've been in Afro Circus a while (the opening gag pretty much lampshades that one). As for their upcoming films, they've shifted the release date of BOO, due to the film opening too close to Inside Out, but haven't rescheduled it yet. And other than the 3 sequels that aren't due out for years yet, they have weak concepts based on Troll dolls (which was going to be a live action/CGI Hybrid at one point, directed by master of the preschool schlockfest Tim Hill at one point, so anything's an improvement) and something called Boss Baby which is a stupid as crap concept, but Tom "Skipper" McGrath is the director, so it could very well turn out good.

 

[D'Snowth]

Dreamworks never really had a self sustaining company, and always needed to partner with another company. Be it Universal, Viacom, or Fox (which I'd say is doing the wost job of the bunch).

I've never known that to happen.

 

[Drtooth]

Dreamworks has never released any of its movies by itself. Same way that prior to the buyout, Pixar was technically a freelance that Disney hired. Remember. When they threatened to leave before Eisner left, Disney made it explicitly clear that they own the characters and were going to make their own awful sequels. Kinda wonder why said movie sequels under Pixar get such bad reputations. Disney's TS3 and MU2 were going to be awful. Jury's out on Cars 2 made by Disney.

But Dreamworks owns its own characters unlike Pixar did, so I guess they just needed the extra push to distribute.

 

[D'Snowth]

I have a few DW movies on DVD - some animated, some live action - and I see no indication from any of them that they were distributed by or produced in association with another company.

 

[Drtooth]

You gotta love Dreamworks.

Movie makes over 300 Million domestically on a 130 budget and it's still considered a failure. How much do they blow on marketing? I'm starting to think their idiotic bookkeeping is what's making them lose money. A true box office bomb doesn't make back its budget at all. I've seen films considered successful when making change.

Here's hoping Home does well.

 

[Muppet Master]

You gotta love Dreamworks.

Movie makes over 300 Million domestically on a 130 budget and it's still considered a failure. How much do they blow on marketing? I'm starting to think their idiotic bookkeeping is what's making them lose money. A true box office bomb doesn't make back its budget at all. I've seen films considered successful when making change.

Here's hoping Home does well.

300 million domestically, the only movies to make 300 mllion or above domestically were Shrek 2 ($441 million) and Shrek the Third ($322 million), so ya not much.

 

[Drtooth]

Crap!! That was a typo. I meant 300 dollars internationally. Can't believe I screwed that one up.

But yeah. 300 Million international on a 130 budget isn't by all means bad. Not great, but not the huge money losing catastrophe they're thinking it is. Unless someone's screwing up something on the advertising costs level, they're not losing as much money as they say they are. Hollywood accounting at its finest. I've seen modest level budget films make less than modest gains and get called "successful" all the time. And what the heck is up with ignoring the international? Most films don't really blow up until they've hit the international level. It's like that only counts as a negative for films that wouldn't translate overseas anyway.

But yeah. Penguins was poor timing, no doubt. The weak Thanksgiving Box office and being released soon after Big Hero 6 didn't help, but the way they just dumped that movie out without any fanfare. Sure, it was supposedly in development for years, but there was little or no word on it until the first trailer. Then again, it seems almost like DW knew the film wouldn't be a huge draw, made it at a fraction of the cost of most animated films, and dumped it on Thanksgiving Weekend (again, no longer a draw) so it can fill in a spot for Home, which has much more riding on it.

 

[antsamthompson9]

Thankfully, this won't affect the VeggieTales DVDs. Since 2009, Huhu Studios has done the animation for the DVDs. Bardel Entertainment, who does all the TV shows DreamWorks has done does VeggieTales in the House.

 

[Drtooth]

The thing is, it only affects that one American studio. I still think blaming the films' performances rather than the fact they make so many movies a year is what's giving them an excuse just to move production overseas where everything's cheaper. Plus, something tells me they're trying to look like this big desperate company so they can find a better partner than Fox. I almost wish the Hasbro buy out panned out. At the very least, Penguin Transformers, Shrek Mr. Potatoheads, and Kung Fu Panda...something? G.I. Joes?

Now they're thinking of moving Kung Fu Panda 3 to next January. Not really that great a move. Sure, cheaply made crap like The Nut Job and Gnomeo and Juilet managed to make modest money, as did Paddington. I just don't see it being that successful at that release.