DreamWorks Animation LLC (DWA)[4] (also known as DreamWorks Animation Studios or simply DreamWorks) is an American animation studio owned by Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a division of Comcast. The studio has released a total of 47 feature films as of December 2023, 45 of which were theatrically released. Their catalogue includes several of the highest-grossing animated films of all time, with Shrek 2 (2004) having been the highest at the time of its release. The studio's first film, Antz, was released on October 2, 1998, and its latest film was Trolls Band Together on November 17, 2023; their upcoming slate of films includes the Netflix original film Orion and the Dark on February 2, 2024, and the theatrical films Kung Fu Panda 4 on March 8, 2024, and The Wild Robot on September 20, 2024.[5][6][7] Additionally, DreamWorks has reserved three release dates for animated films: January 31, 2025, August 1, 2025, and September 26, 2025.[8]
Formed as a division of DreamWorks Pictures in 1994 with alumni from Amblin Entertainment's former animation branch Amblimation, it was spun off into a separate company in 2004. NBCUniversal acquired DreamWorks Animation at a cost of $3.8 billion in 2016. The studio originally made some traditionally animated films, as well as three stop-motion co-productions with Aardman Animations, but now exclusively relies on computer animation. Its productions, including The Prince of Egypt, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and the Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon franchises, have received various accolades, including three Academy Awards, 41 Emmy Awards, numerous Annie Awards, and multiple Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.
Dreamworks Animation
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On October 12, 1994, a trio of entertainment players, film director and producer Steven Spielberg, former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and music executive David Geffen, founded DreamWorks SKG (the three letters taken from the surnames of the founders). To build the talent base, Spielberg brought over artists from his London-based studio, Amblimation, while Katzenberg recruited some of the top animation staff from Disney.[10] Some of Amblimation's artists came to DreamWorks in 1995, when the studio's last feature, Balto, was completed,[11] with the rest doing so following the studio's closure in 1997.[12]
In 1995, DreamWorks signed a co-production deal with Pacific Data Images to form subsidiary PDI, LLC (PDI owned 60% of PDI, LLC, while DreamWorks SKG owned 40%). This new unit would produce computer-generated feature films, beginning with Antz in 1998. In the same year, DreamWorks SKG produced The Prince of Egypt, which used both CGI technology and traditional animation techniques.
In 1997, DreamWorks partnered with British stop-motion animation studio Aardman Animations to co-produce and distribute Chicken Run (2000), a stop-motion film already in pre-production.[13] Two years later they extended the deal for an additional four films. With Aardman doing stop-motion and the existing traditional and computer productions, they covered all three major styles of animation.[14] This partnership had DreamWorks participating in the production of stop-motion films in Bristol, and also had Aardman participating in some of the CGI films made in the United States.
In 2001, Shrek was released and went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Due to the success of CGI animated films, DWA decided the same year to exit hand-drawn animation business after their next two films, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003), making a total of five hand-drawn films. Beginning with Shrek 2 (2004), all released films, other than the stop-motion film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) co-produced with Aardman, were produced with CGI.[16] The releases of Shrek 2 and Shark Tale also made DWA the first animation studio to produce two CGI animated features in a single year.[17]
The animation division was spun off into a publicly traded company named DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (doing business as DreamWorks Animation LLC) on October 27, 2004, and traded via the New York Stock Exchange.[citation needed] Katzenberg headed the new division, while Spielberg and Geffen remained on board as investors and consultants.[18] DWA also inherited interests in PDI/DreamWorks. They made an agreement with their former parent to distribute all of their films until they delivered twelve new films, or December 12, 2010, whichever came last.[17]
Beginning in 2010, the studio had planned to release five feature films over the course of every two years,[31] but the next year the studio revisited their plans, "but beyond 2012, Katzenberg said the studio will play it by year, even if that means abandoning his proclamation that DWA would try to release three pictures in a single year, every other year."[32] In 2010, DWA became the first animation studio that released three feature-length CG-animated films in a year.[33] The same year, the company purchased the film rights to the Trolls franchise.[34]
On January 5, 2015, DreamWorks Animation announced that Bonnie Arnold, producer of the How to Train Your Dragon series and Mireille Soria, producer of the Madagascar series were named co-presidents of the studio's feature animation division. At the same time, it was also announced that Bill Damaschke would step down from his position as Chief Creative Officer. So far, under Arnold and Soria's current tenure they signed Jason Reitman[59] and Edgar Wright[60] to work on their own animation debuts. Two weeks later, PDI/DreamWorks completely shut down as part of its parent company's larger restructuring efforts due to the box office underperformance of Penguins of Madagascar (2014), cutting 500 jobs.[61]
Although a spokesperson stated that Meledandri would work with Universal Pictures to determine "the most effective path forward for Illumination and DreamWorks Animation", he did not take over DreamWorks as was previously announced, and the two studios remain separate. Arnold and Soria retained their positions as co-presidents of DreamWorks' Feature Animation division, while Margie Cohn would lead a television animation division for the entire Universal Pictures group. DreamWorks' digital, marketing, consumer products, and gaming divisions were absorbed into NBCUniversal.[73][74][75][76][77]
In January 2017, Christopher DeFaria joined DreamWorks Animation in the newly created position of president of the DreamWorks Feature Animation Group.[81] As president, DeFaria oversaw all aspects of DWA's feature animation business, including slate strategy, development, production; innovation and technology; and business affairs.[81][82]
On October 6, 2023, Cartoon Brew reported that DreamWorks Animation was moving away from producing films in-house at their Glendale campus to rely more heavily on outside studios after 2024, as part of a layoff by chief operating officer Randy Lake in a series of meetings the previous month. According to the report, Sony Pictures Imageworks was named as the animation service for one of DreamWorks' three unannounced films scheduled for 2025.[107]
Two years after its acquisition by Universal Pictures in 2016, a new logo was introduced. It is said that it pays homage to the evolution of animation.[108] It received a new fanfare composed by John Powell, the other composer of the first Shrek and other DreamWorks films, adapting some cues from Shrek 2 and tones from John Williams' DreamWorks Pictures fanfare to create the music for the logo. The logo debuted on the first trailer of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) in 2018,[109] but the full animated version and the new fanfare debuted on February 22, 2019, with the release of the film, for which Powell also composed the score.
Additionally, DreamWorks occasionally outsources its animation production to other studios. For example, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie was animated by Mikros Image alongside Technicolor Animation Productions and Spirit Untamed, and production assets for The Boss Baby: Family Business and The Bad Guys were provided by Jellyfish Pictures, which also did the marketing custom animation for Trolls World Tour alongside Minimo VFX, which provided rigging for Spirit Untamed.
Topics such as religion, sexuality, and dictatorship was touched upon in this era, and there was a lot of mature content in pretty much all of the films in this era. This was during the late 1990s and the early 2000s, so traditional animation was still in the mix. These films consisted of traditional animation, CGI, and stop motion, since the studio was still trying to figure out what worked for them. Even in this era, there was an emphasis on lowbrow humor, though it was much more toned down in this era. The films in this era consist of:
Unrelated to the strikes, animation has been an area that has been significantly affected by the boom in streaming and its later course correction. Companies like Netflix heavily invested in animation as a way to attract younger audiences, but after facing a slow down in subscriber growth, cut part-time animation related jobs and canceled series. HBO Max also canceled shows.
15 years after it attempted to be a game-changer with Antz and The Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks indeed changed the animation landscape, but arguably for the worse, creating a legion of copy-cats in the vein of Lionsgate's Happily N'Ever After and Disney's Gnomeo & Juliet. No matter their intentions, they inspired a legion of mainstream animated films that were less adult, more explicitly "kid-friendly" in the worst ways. It nonetheless has the financial success to clearly place it number 02 behind the Mouse House, if not number 01 in global box office. But over the next 15 years, their job will be two-fold: 2351a5e196
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