Animation

Paramount opens new animation studio and pokes Dreamworks in the eye

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Alan Gardner July 8, 2011 1 minute 2 comments

Paramount has announced it’s getting into the animation business and hopes to release their first film in 2014 – a move that puts DreamWorks in a difficult position as Paramount is currently DreamWork’s distributor. Filmschoolrejects.com reports that Dreamworks animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg had been shopping around the idea of selling DWA as part of a new distribution deal (maybe somewhat like how Disney eventually bought Pixar after years of being Pixar’s distributor), but with Paramount rolling their own could leave DWA without a buyer and a distributor.

This snippet at Reuters gives of a hint on a direction the new studio might go:

[Paramount Chairman & CEO Brad Grey] said Paramount will draw on corporate siblings in the Viacom empire, particularly the kids cable network Nickelodeon.

“We will build our animation division hand in glove with Nickelodeon. They make great family movies, so it makes a lot of sense to work with them and with Viacom’s consumer products division to build this into a global film business,” he said.