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DreamWorks Studios (commonly known as DreamWorks) is an American film production studio and media company owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It was founded in 1934 as Wilson Siblings Studio, Ltd. (WILSO) by British-American siblings Dora (1902-2000) and Mike Wilson (1900-1996). The studio started as an animation studio, then later expanded into a film and television studio, producing feature films, live-action productions and television programs. The studio was previously known as Wilson Cartoon Workshop, Dora Wilson Productions, DW Film Company, and DW-Go Fish Film Corporation, with divisions such as DW-Go Fish Pictures (later known as DreamWorks Pictures) and DW-Go Fish Cartoon Studio (later known as DreamWorks Animation) and then DreamWorks Studios. From 1955 to 1997, DreamWorks distributed its own and third-party films by itself in worldwide, after collaborating deals with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1942 to 1947 and Warner Bros. Pictures from 1948 to 1954 to release feature films, although the studio also did a few distribution deals with a few other stuidos (mainly Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures) in the 1960s and 1980s. From 1997 to 2016, other film studios would distribute their films internationally. For short films, they were distributed by Monogram Pictures (1934-1936) and Republic Pictures (1937-1954), before DreamWorks distributed most of their short films from 1955 to 2005.
On October 12, 1994, after the production of Wilson's last animated feature film produced during her career (Trolls) and during the production of other films, she retired and sold her studio to Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (together, SKG), for their take over to revive the studio. On May 1, 2000, Dora Wilson passed away at the age of 97.
As of August 2016, NBCUniversal acquired DreamWorks and its divisions, along with all of its live action works (excluding the Transformers film series) and the animated films in its library, making it a division of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.
History[]
Dora Wilson era (1934-1994)[]
Animator and movie producer Dora Elysian Wilson, along with her eldest brother Mike Oliver Wilson, founded her animation studio based in Hollywood in 1934, after moving away from New York City where she founded her first animation studio, New York Comic Studio, Inc. (1930-1933). TBD
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In 1938, after being caught attention by the universal blockbuster success of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released a year earlier, Wilson expanded into feature production to replicate Disney's success. At the same time, Wilson had planned for pitching with films such as Headin' South, Dawn of Mammals, The Magic Paintbrush (a commendation which mix between animation and live-action), three respective adaptations of P. L. Travers' Marry Poppins, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Wilson attempted to ask Republic Pictures (the distributor for Dreamtoons and Dora Wilson's one-shot shorts) for disturbing her feature projects until Republic has lack of interest but only to release only her short films. After a few attempts with other movie studios with the same result, Wilson then made a distributing deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with MGM's own animated cartoon studio to partner Dora Wilson's studio. In 1939, beginning the production of Headin' South, Wilson and MGM's animation producer Fred Quimby both pitched to produced a full-animated follow-up to MGM's classic The Wizard of Oz.
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In 1947, after the release of The Christmas Tales, Dora Wilson Productions ended its feature film partnership with MGM while making a new distribution deal with Warner Bros., which lead MGM to keep the ownership rights to the films co-produced with Dora Wilson Productions, except Headin' South since MGM decided to refuse to renew the rights.
In 1966, DreamWorks Pictures acquired Go Fish Studios from founder Albert Ringering and renamed it as DW Television Productions, now known as DreamWorks Television. In the 1970s, DreamWorks joined forces with Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to form Cinema International Corporation (now known as United International Pictures). TBD
In the early 1990s, during production of DreamWorks/Amblin's animated film Trolls, DreamWorks Studios announced that Dora Wilson would retire after 60 years, selling her studio to entertainment legend Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen (SKG) era (1994-2016)[]
In August 1994, following the studio's 60th anniversary, an announcement was made regarding Dora Wilson would sell her studio to entertainment figures Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen and finally retire for good. On October 12, 1994, she finally retired.
In 1995, traditional animation artists from Amblimation joined DreamWorks Animation, which led to DreamWorks buying part of Pacific Data Images, a company specializing in visual effects, and renaming PDI/DreamWorks. Both were software divisions, and would merge later on. For then, DreamWorks had new traditional animators working for their animation department, and the computer animators worked on CG films. Amblimation would be shut down in 1997, leading the staff to join to work DreamWorks Animation, while most of the studio's old animators came to their retirement or passed away.
On January 1, 1997, the transactions of DreamWorks Studios was completed and the three new owners created a division for the studio's collection of feature films, shorts and television programs that were produced prior to 1997 which called DreamWorks Classic Entertainment (later known as DreamWorks Classics), leading DreamWorks to enter it new era known as the SKG era.
In the same year, DreamWorks Pictures released its first three feature films during the SKG era and being produced without Dora Wilson's involvement, The Peacemaker, a film about terrorism; Amistad, Spielberg's first film for the studio about the African slave rebellion and the aftermath of the massacre; and Mouse Hunt, a remake to the 1961 animated comedy Mouse in the House, as the latter was not only DreamWorks' first remake to one of its classic films, but the second major Hollywood studio to adapt one of their animated films into a live-action film, after Walt Disney Pictures' 1996 live-action remake to 101 Dalmatians.
In 1998 and 1999, The studio released their first four animated features that were neither produced nor pitched by Dora Wilson, Antz (1998) (DreamWorks' first computer-animated feature; as the latter being produced by PDI/DreamWorks), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Big Five (1999), and Tiger's Tale (1999). which were distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. DreamWorks Pictures continued to distribute PDI/DreamWorks productions through their distribution name until 2004.
Starting in 1999, DreamWorks won three consecutive Academy Awards for Best Picture for American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind (the latter two were co-productions with Universal Pictures). The same year, Go Fish Pictures, a division of DreamWorks that produced and distributed arthouse, independent, foreign films, and anime, was founded. The name 'Go Fish Pictures' came from the original incarnation for DreamWorks Television, Go Fish Studios. The division experienced success with anime films Millennium Actress (2003) and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), respectively, which led them to venture into releasing live-action films, with the release of The Chumscrubber. However, The Chumscrubber was a commercial and critical failure, which led Go Fish to discontinued producing and releasing anymore live-action films in 2007 and start to focus solely for Japanese anime, shortly after the release of the Japanese film Casshern. At the same time, Go Fish Pictures was renamed to Go Fish Animation and transferred to DreamWorks Animation alongside with its anime library.
On November 2006, after the release of DreamWorks/Aardman's Flushed Away, DreamWorks and Aardman end its partnership from producing animated films due to the "creative differences" (although Aardman still co-produces the animated television series Sketch Satires with DreamWorks Animation Television/Moonboy Animation). While the rights of the films co-produced by Aardman are being retained by DreamWorks, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) is the only film fully owned by Aardman. However, DreamWorks still keep the distribution rights to the film worldwide, except in the UK.
In December 2007, DreamWorks founded Bright Star Pictures, a new label for film and television genres aimed at Christian audiences, with the 1998 animated film The Prince of Egypt being moved to the label's library.
In December 2015, DreamWorks hit an all-time low when they released The Filany Family and the Lost City of Christmas to a universally unfavorable response from critics and audiences and extremely massive underperformance at the box office, and then winning every award at the Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture. As a result, DreamWorks decided to put themselves up for sale.
Comcast era (2016-present)[]
TBD
Logo[]
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Film library[]
For a more comprehensive list, see List of DreamWorks films