DreamWorks SKG was founded in 1994.
Founder:
Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen collaborated to form this studio.
About the Company:
Dreamworks Animation SKG, primarly led by Katzenberg, is the highly successful, animation-oriented subdivision of Dreamworks SKG. It has plans in the future to split off from the primary company to become its own publicly traded company of DreamWorks Animation, Inc. While DreamWorks is a fairly recent addition to the animation industry, it has skyrocketed to become a major player, competing with several other shining newcomers.
Recent Works:
Fatal Frame: The Movie (2004)
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Shark Tale (2004)
Shrek 2 (2004)
Tusker (2004)
Seabiscuit (2003)
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
The Tuxedo (2002)
The Time Machine (2002)
Shrek (2001)
Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
Chicken Run (2000)
The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Antz (1998)
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Small Soldiers (1998)
DreamWorks SKG was formed in 1994 as a diversified entertainment company, with interests in film, animation, television, and music. Its animation division, headed by Jeffrey Katzenberg, has developed into a CG animation studio with locations in Northern and Southern California, as well as several international production facilities.
While DreamWorks has been producing films for a decade, including animated smashes such as 1998's Antz and Small Soldiers, 2001 marked its biggest success in the record-breaking film Shrek, which won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Its sequel broke box office records to become the top animated film of all time, and ensure DreamWorks' name in animation history.
DreamWorks has recently opened a new CG animation facility in Glendale, California, where the movie Shark Tale was created. This movie marks DreamWorks as the first animation studio to ever release two wholly computer-animated films in a single year.
History of DreamWorks Animation
By Brian Tallerico
"To phrase it in the form of a SAT question - Mickey Mouse is to Disney as Bugs Bunny is to Warner Brothers as Shrek...is to DreamWorks Animation."
Every good animation studio needs an icon, that one fantastically popular character who both sums up the company's attitude and acts as their spokesperson to the world. And, to phrase it in the form of a SAT question - Mickey Mouse is to Disney as Bugs Bunny is to Warner Brothers as Shrek...is to DreamWorks Animation.
Trust us, don't be surprised if, in the very near feature, you find yourself confronted by an angry teenager dressed like a green ogre at DreamWorld or Worksland or whatever theme park will eventually spin off from the increasingly powerful company that is DreamWorks Animation SKG. Shrek may be the Mickey of DreamWorks, but he's not the only creation of this burgeoning animation powerhouse. In the DreamWorks theme park of the future, you'll be able to see tourists getting their photos snapped with the penguins from Madagascar, you'll probably catch RJ the Raccoon from Over the Hedge napping by the snack bar, and, if you're lucky, you might even spot the elusive Oscar from Shark Tale getting beaten up by a couple of punk kids. The basic fact is that, while Disney used to rule the animated screens, the market has opened up in the last few years, and the House that Shrek built has become a major player. Disney may still be the Yankees of the animation industry, but there's still room for a Mets, and cartoon fans everywhere have definitely begun rooting for DreamWorks Animation.
It started all the way back in 1980 when Carl Rosendahl founded Pacific Data Images, a company that would go on to help found the DreamWorks Animation world. For a good part of the '80s, PDI created mostly just animated logos and worked on some television advertisements, but their first foray into film work was a huge one, contributing special effects to James Cameron's landmark Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen founded DreamWorks SKG (the first initials of their last names) in 1994 and the two companies, PDI and SKG, eventually formed a co-production deal in 1996 which led to their first big-screen animated feature the next year, the CGI comedy Antz. While Antz featured a unique voice cast (Woody Allen, Sylvester Stallone, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken, and Sharon Stone, to name a few) and a more sophisticated tone than many other mainstream animated hits, most people still saw DreamWorks as a second-string player in the Hollywood animation game. It didn't help that Antz came out around the same time as the popular A Bug's Life from Disney's Pixar company or that DreamWorks'second feature, the traditionally animated The Prince of Egypt, underperformed at the box office. Like Z, the neurotic hero in Antz, DreamWorks still had a big hill to climb.
In 2000, DreamWorks SKG officially split off from the DreamWorks live-action studio, forming their own business division called DreamWorks Animation and the company bought Pacific Data Images. It would be a huge year for DreamWorks because it marked the first animated critical hit for the fledgling studio and the beginning of a relationship that would be a part of the studio for the next few years. The movie was the stop-motion animated Chicken Run, a co-production between DreamWorks and the esteemed British studio, Aardman Animation, best known for their Wallace & Gromit shorts. Chicken Run wasn't a smash hit, but it was a critical success, attracting legions of fans and paving the way for DreamWorks' future as a home for quality animation.
That future was cemented in May of 2001 when a little guy named Shrek forever changed the animation game, and that's no exaggeration. Before Shrek, Disney ruled everything in the world of big-screen animation, but a smart, well-told fractured fairy tale starring Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy changed that immediately. Shrek was a huge hit, both critically and commercially. Based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book, Shrek was the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and made almost half a billion dollars worldwide. Beyond that, Shrek even changed the way that animated films are written, with more and more features incorporating pop culture references and other Shrek-isms. Dolls, toys, video games, comic books - Shrek doesn't need a theme park. We're living in a Shrek world already. The inevitable Shrek 2 debuted in 2004, producing the highest opening weekend for an animated feature ever. In fact, Shrek 2 is the seventh most successful movie of all time overall, making $920 million worldwide. It's also the highest-grossing animated film of all time.
Well, at least for another couple of weeks, it is. Shrek the Third hits theaters on May 18th and, unlike the Spider-Man or Pirates series, which are trying to convince gullible fans that they're over, the Shrek franchise is showing no signs of slowing down. Shrek 4 is already slated for 2010, and Shrek 5 for 2012. Not to mention, the upcoming Shrek TV specials and a possible spin-off film for Puss in Boots. Basically, if you're allergic to Scottish accents and the color green, you're going to be miserable for the next decade or so, because Shrek isn't going anywhere any time soon.
But will Shrek be remembered as DreamWorks Animation's only major hit? For a while, it looked like that might be the case. Post-Shrek, the DreamWorks dream team went back to 2-D animation and produced two colossal bombs, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas - they would be the last two traditional animated films for the studio. The company's next CGI flick, Shark Tale with Will Smith and Jack Black, didn't catch Shrek-sized fire, despite decent box office receipts. The studio even tried their hand at TV animation, producing the train wreck that was Father of the Pride, the very short-lived NBC animated sitcom about Las Vegas show lions, which remains arguably the young studio's biggest failure to date. Meanwhile, the Aardman/DreamWorks team tried to build on their Chicken Run success with Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Flushed Away, two films that were well-received critically but failed to perform at the box office. As a result, DreamWorks severed their relationship with Aardman at the end of 2006.
It wasn't until May of 2005, four years after the first Shrek, that DreamWorks Animation SKG found their second franchise with a lion, zebra, giraffe, and hippo. Madagascar wasn't the same size hit as Shrek, but the film starring Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, and David Schwimmer proved that the studio could maintain another franchise while Shrek was still in full force. Madagascar 2: The Crate Escape is currently scheduled for November of 2008.
The DreamWorks Animation SKG entry for Summer 2006 was Over the Hedge, another film more on a level of success with Shark Tale than Shrek. The fall entry, Flushed Away, performed even more disappointingly, and, for now, it looks like all of the DreamWorks Animations eggs are placed firmly in two baskets - Shrek and Madagascar.
Like any good production company, DreamWorks isn't going to rely on just the big green ogre or hypochondriac giraffe for all their future successes, and they're working hard to find another franchise. Will it be Bee Movie, the long-anticipated project from Jerry Seinfeld, set for release in November of 2007? How about Kung Fu Panda with Angelina Jolie, scheduled for June of 2008? And how much bigger can the Shrek franchise get? Is there anyway it can get more popular or has it reached the animated ceiling?
The changing market for CGI animation has created a different world than just a decade ago when Disney's Toy Story and A Bug's Life were the only big players in the game. This summer alone, in the span of six weeks, animation fans can catch three major CGI films from different studios - Sony has Surf's Up, Disney has Ratatouille, and DreamWorks SKG has Shrek the Third. In a relatively short time span and thanks to the big shoulders of a smelly green guy, DreamWorks has become an animation studio to reckon with, one that shows no sign of slowing down. There may have been a few growing pains - Father of the Pride and Shark Tale- and a few underrated adventures - all of the Aardman projects - but DreamWorks Animation SKG isn't laying back and allowing Shrek to be their only franchise. Like the early days of Disney, they're trying different things, seeing what works and learning from what doesn't. Shrek may not admit it, but Walt would be proud.