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UNIVERSAL, DREAMWORKS IN EXCLUSIVE ACQUISITION TALKS Monday, August 1 2005 
At
a
board
meeting
on
Friday,
GE
directors
agreed
to
allow
NBC
Universal
to
pursue
the
acquisition
of
the
live-action
unit
of
DreamWorks,
the
Wall
Street
Journal
reported
today,
citing
several
people
familiar
with
the
matter.
Separately,
the
New
York
Times
reported
that
the
GE
board
agreed
to
allow
NBC
to
negotiate
exclusively
with
DreamWorks,
while
DreamWorks,
which
is
held
privately,
did
the
same.
The
Times
said
that
the
central
players
in
the
negotiations
are
(more)MCDONALD'S LOOKING TO PLAY THE FIELD Thursday, July 28 2005 McDonald's, which has maintained a monogamous marketing marriage to the Walt Disney Co. for ten years, has shifted its affection to DreamWorks Animation. It announced Wednesday that it will not resign with Disney when its contract expires next year and will instead take on DreamWorks Animation as a non-exclusive marketing partner beginning in 2007 with the release of Shrek 3. In recent years, McDonald's has found itself aligned with Disney even as the studio released (more) |
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Ordinarily it's not considered good news when a company reports a $3.7-million loss in a quarter after posting a profit of $146.1 million during the same quarter a year ago. However, DreamWorks Animation had expected -- and forecast -- a far more sizable loss, and its stock jumped 3 percent in after-hours trading following release of the company's quarterly financial statement. The company credited sales of tie-in products to the movie Madagascar for helping to offset huge returns of DVDs for Shrek 2 and Shark Tale. (Since DreamWorks Pictures and Universal are compensated for theatrical marketing and distribution costs and fees before the animation studio receives any revenue, no box-office revenue from Madagascar was included in the quarterly figures. The film, however, is a box office smash, earning $432 million in worldwide ticket sales, and is expected to push DreamWorks Animation well into the black in the fourth quarter.)
