How Dreamworks Almost Went Bankrupt... Twice

this video is brought to you by Squarespace the chair DreamWorks seems to have come to define different things depending on who you ask not just in the wake of them shifting the focus from a mixture of a lot of action and animated features over to a business almost solely supported by set animation division but also a flavor of movie that is much more difficult to define and those from that are a competitor over a Disney / Pixar the sheer abundance of films DreamWorks Animation SKG seems to bring out each year makes it much more difficult to pin down where exactly do you max next step is going to take them know each of them is going to be turned into the next big franchise something they are much more comfortable with launching than Pixar who have announced a full stop on their sequel culture of the decade prior while this trial and error strategy certainly got Dream X to where they are now as a well-established and renowned studio known for many a successful franchise it was a long and bumpy route there with some movies and the questionable business decisions Rubik's would rather not have you dream about actually once said a number of years ago if you don't come to work on Saturday don't bother coming on Sunday now now here's the problem with that when I said it I meant it this goes beyond the copycat stories behind it hands and she immediately or some films day of release it just seems to be common courtesy amongst major animation studios these days and rather makes you question if DreamWorks would even have stuck around if it wasn't for some certain names in the credits with co-founder David Geffen's stating in two thousand five already that the company almost went bankrupt twice with their first two films greatly underperforming and once as early as the theory being considered a massive failure not able to recoup its budget which isn't a very comforting thought considering Dreamhack CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg was a hundred percent behind the road to El Dorado it was the project that was supposed to get them out of the Rudd there were their first two animated features with songs from Alton John and brilliant 2d animation with some of the animators he had escorted from Disney's animation division after his departure from the company back then Katzenberg was still adamant on having classic 2d animated features be what defines their company which started out as a conjoined effort between him and the Hollywood Argonauts Steven Spielberg and the aforementioned David Geffen in the wake of Disney's success with features such as the Lion King as part of the so called Renaissance Katzenberg wanted to not only prove himself to as much more wealthy colleagues half the company excelled the thing that defined him through all these years of working at Disney answer Mike Eisner and a lot of the ongoing legal dispute between these two around the time put pressure on the man that he fell did not recognize his abilities at his old job and hitting them where it hurt while Katzenberg technically did achieve that last thing partially also thanks to eisenerz not-so-subtle involuntary camión Shrek it wasn't DreamWorks as outstanding achievements that put Disney in the brook Harry situation around this time which they definitely were swell as both a movie from that and the following year underperformed at the box office despite mostly positive critical acclaim however and luckily for DreamWorks well Disney was still only dipping their feet into a medium that would become much more important later down the line than even early science like the success of the first Toy Story signals Dream X was using what they had learned from their first released CG feature ants to bring forth the unexpected hate there was animators three marks his first venture Prince of Egypt which the Excel CEO cat smirk was dead set on turning into the breathtaking musical feature there would knock audiences from their seats and recognize the company is not just the cheap Disney knockoff but better than them they had been developing Shrek behind the scenes the only reason the actual first animated feature ants was done and that medium was the same it was released before Prince of Egypt to get the upper hand over Pixar and have a CG animated movie about bugs out before them and I'll perform the other at the box office and look how well that turned out but the studio took into account the criticisms audience half of the company with ants and hell brownish unappealing it looked trying to combine the cartoony aesthetic they had hoped to achieve with her 2d films alongside the new technology available to them thanks to CG which would not have happened had it not been for the complete failure of wrote Eldorado something that should have been the first sign for Katzenberg to back down and take it easy on the 2d animated features that didn't seem like the way to go anymore when Shrek was released in 2001 it easily surpassed expectations both audiences and DreamWorks themselves had in the picture seeing as how it was more of a hit piece against Disney than anything else which was why working on it instead of the much more artistically driven road to El Dorado was often described by the artists as being sent to the Gulag also because no one could quite nail down the tone they were going for in the first place but it was a gulag that ultimately would make more money than any of their previous in-house productions combined the atman productions collaboration chicken run did turn out to be a surprise hit but certainly didn't ever make DreamWorks consider stop-motion the way to go with how much more time-consuming it was their following two conjoined efforts would ultimately prove to be financial flops putting a halt to the other two that was supposed to come out on to dream X's mantle if there was any sentiment set by Shrek success however it was that the company wouldn't need to crack under precious and but the CG competitor Pixar if only they played their cards right when Prince of Egypt was released in 98 part of Katzenberg knew the film wasn't going to be a smash hit that would catapult them right into the spotlight Bible stories are famously difficult market to a broader audience and the marketing mostly enjoyed adults feather limited its possible reach so to follow up here now infamous CG animated ogre voiced by Mike Myers teaching us about onions with two 2d animated movies back-to-back seems almost comical looking back DreamWorks is 2002 efforts Barrett's Delian of the James Cameron performed almost as poorly at the Hotel Dorado and things were already looking somewhat grim leading up to it as surprise competitive blue sky with their first CG animated Ice Age movie which at the time was the third best performing animated feature on opening weekend had further solidified the precedent of where the trend said by Shrek had headed spirit normally would have also been overshadowed by leader and stitch over at Disney had they not had their own set of troubles to deal with veteran animators musk and Clemens passion project Treasure Planet was first proposed to the studio in 89 and while the two remained adamant about the film's eventual success despite a market that was not seeking out for stories like it it would turn out to be the company's biggest failure to date with the loss of an estimated 74 million dollars in total for Disney and for DreamWorks this normally would have been an occasion to celebrate as they theoretically still beat out Disney and would even get an Oscar nomination for spirit as the newly established Academy Award for Best Animated Feature but for how critical even artists at DreamWorks had become a cat's mergs vehement push for 2d animation in spite of the landscape shifting radically around them I doubt anyone could have predicted what happened next Captain pitch the edge of the world pay up is flat if there was ever a poster child for biggest animated bombs and movie history chances a 2003 Sinbad legend of the seven seas would be one of the main contenders the adaption of the classic story from the Arabian Nights was first conceived to be the first of six more tales they would construct around the character portrayed by big-name actor Brad Pitt and supported by other well-known celebrities such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Cathy the well-known celebrities such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Katherine celebrities such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Catherine zeta-jones and supported by other well-known celebrities such as Michelle Pfeiffer although the director was not directly involved in it it was there a match to Spielberg's Indiana Jones and animated form hoping to appeal to a market of viewers that grew up with that franchise and remained that knack for adventure certainly a market they hadn't tapped into as all their other movies seem to be metaphors of Katzenberg leading away the Disney animators to the promised land of dreamers and warhorse without the war but as cats Merc and his team realized the implications Disney's recent astronomical misstep could half of the company they try to back pad as quickly as possible changing the direction from an adult-oriented to a more comedic piece with the animal sidekick spike taking on a much bigger role than earlier and trying to condense the story and still get it out as quickly as possible they seem to have missed the mark with critics along the way who criticized it for being too much like a Disney movie I guess making it the lowest rated remix movie up until that point at 45 percent on Rotten Tomatoes three percent less than or Eldorado a far more important aspect this one beat out Eldorado with was its box of his performance where even just an opening weekend it made half of that film's profit at a mere six million dollars this was made all the more comical after pixxa just released their answer to DreamWorks as previous CG effort with Finding Nemo the week before which would go on to become the highest grossing animated feature until that point remakes that already tried incorporating many of the elements they had seen working on Disney's Atlantis and later Treasure Planet into Sinbad using state-of-the-art CG animated water effects instead of hand-drawn ones cats mirko's watching for finally willing to have the artists have more input on the final product than was the case with the roto rado this was meant to be a compromise between the CG and 2d division to slowly bridge the gap over time well the live-action productions would provide the funds for new ventures but Sinbad slowed any of those plans to the screeching holes as it only managed to gross little over 18 million dollars against the 60 million dollar budget which usually would only make them consider this a step in the wrong direction however when taking into account all other marketing costs and various other financial missteps behind the scenes this movie is estimated to have cost the company an astonishing 125 million dollars overall placing it on top off the list of biggest box of his bombs for a total of 15 years not just animated bombs but movies overall well to this day no one is quite sure how exactly it came to this number and how accurate it really is I highly doubt dream acts itself would willingly inflate it on the market already set out to see them fail with how much they kept hyping up their own endeavors because needless to say this was devastating for all sides involved the Gian DreamWorks SKG David Geffen was first ourselves DreamWorks records division to Universal for a hundred million dollars any plans for additional Sinbad movies were scrapped perhaps most important of all it changed the way the company CEO Jeffrey Katz murk looked at the way they were handling things think of the man what you may there's no denying that up until that point he had an undying passion for the magic of 2d animation always trying to experiment with any of the new releases and preaching its wonders to anyone that didn't ask and although to this day no one is quite certain about the exact law Streamyx had to suffer in the wake of Sinbad the fact that none of the companies for 2d animated movies managed to make a dent either with critics or in the worldwide market it finally seems to dawn on him something changed in Katzenberg almost like the person before and after Sinbad were not even the same entity gone was this relentlessly enthusiastic answer T about trying to best isn't it what the same medium that made him who he was and in figures that seemed even more relentless to beat them at their own new game they had already proven themselves to be able with Shrek and by God would that augers save them again [Music] for all it's worth Sinbad was by no means the end of DreamWorks it remained the biggest flaw for quite some time and I'm sure there's a reason Katzenberg just pretends it never even happened these days there was a movie called spirit stallion of the Cimarron and it's a it was the last hand-drawn animated movie that I made as that sort of revolution of CG came along Shrek was the next one after it but if anything they ultimately took this as a lesson they needed to learn for them to never make another 2d movie and therefore likely flop again we Katzenberg saying that the idea of traditional stories being told using traditional animation would likely be a thing of the past and as they realized that they went all-in on the model most of us know the company for today 2news CG features a year with each of them a potential candidate for being turned into the next flagship franchise with plenty of merchandise to tie into them Shrek 2 and Shark Tale would be released that following year and met with mediocre - very positive perception and massive success at the box office which tracked to beating out Finding Nemo sales almost instantly and ensuring the success of entry 3 a few years later in between we saw the rise of Madagascar which would go on to be another one of their most critically acclaimed series alongside Kong for pan and 2008 arguably the most creative a movie of their still their point while still employing the formula of having a bankable celebrity main voice role as the selling point for it something the company has become somewhat infamous for over the years I think we all know what the prime example for that would and say for a few minor missteps like the aforementioned flushed away in collaboration with art Minh underperforming they were on a clear winning streak with the movies from right after Simba was released up until about 2010 this was the first time DreamWorks had released three animated movies in the same year after they'd only put out monsters vs. aliens that year prior something no other animation company had done before these included this supposed ending to the Shrek tetralogy shrek forever after which it's almost as well as the third one financially the first movie in the critical darling that is the How to Train Your Dragon franchise and also the year Megamind was released a movie that while by no means bad or a financial failure didn't manage to leave any lasting impact and was the person's b-movie not to be turned into the TV series and while the following year was definitely massive successful DreamWorks with - Rex been off puss-in-boots and Kung Fu Panda - it was us the first time no new franchise was launched they turned a profit sure and contraband or - was the best received sequel of their sin strike - but after only one more sequel as 2012 Madagascar 3 which would turn out to be another massive success it was time for something new and things to once again take a turn for the worse if they one love this leg as the last film to be released as part of DreamWorks as distribution view a paramount rise of the Guardians was conceived as part of the ongoing strategy to subvert the expectations set by Disney stealth story structure and breathe new life into both fairy and modern tales in this case the children's book guardians of childhood by William Joyce some addresses earlier work like a day will blur Robinson and Rolie Polie Olie had already been translated into the animated medium in the past and this one would also have the author be closely involved and bringing to the big screen his story about various classic holiday icons ending of Jude Law pretty good if you ask me and had some breathtaking animation and solid writing that definitely made it stand out above the rest with the much darker tone ax was going for it really did seem like they were going for an aesthetic much different from any of the other most recent movies almost giving off the impression of it being aimed at adults moreso than kids like the first plan with spirits and Prince of Egypt 87 million dollars this movie made dreamers lose 87 million dollars I have no idea how so little people are talking about this this was the most gigantic failure dreamers had released in almost a decade with the most blatant Mis marketing since their films from the early 2000s while the trailers tried to make it seem like the movie is going to be almost somewhat of a parody of a vendor still movies and fairy tales with Santa and his hip tattoos and Mars Needs Moms style nightmare fuel motion captured two fairy we found a product masa embraced the structure and send it a really heartfelt story around it which he also wouldn't have guessed because the other trailers made the film seem follow comedic than it really was since the film itself was rather dark I mean I'm a main character dies he's dead and I don't know if I was paramount slowly losing faith in the project and being tired of dream arcs that caused the film to be so poorly marketed but even unreleased no one cared about rise of the Guardians I mean I didn't care about rise of the guardians record Ralph came out right before this one I had better things to worry about and it somehow still came to a draw with that film on rise of the Guardians opening weekend even as Rolf was in its third week or so it got beat out by Lincoln a historical drama did better than a flagship DreamWorks movie in many ways this film represented what went wrong not only at DreamWorks was Sinbad also the Black Cauldron one of Disney's other major failures where it looked like it was supposed to appeal to older kids but ultimately ended up being a family film as he should have been able to guess as it was based on a book for young children audiences were alienated by Hassan was this random Russian dude that say for the beard didn't much resemble their idea what this character was meant to represent just as the Easter Bunny get turned into this Australian boxing icon fittingly portrayed by Wolverine himself while these are somewhat admirable twists to our preconceived notion of what these characters should be like and allowed for the author to be involved with bringing his vision to life it seemed like first-time director Peter Ramsay was setting his expectations too high in regards to how big an audience they would appeal to according to him they didn't want to make a satire parody or be edgy for the momentary sake they thought that would have been another way of laughing at the characters like oh look they're so badass now that's so cool it's a movie for kids to go see and enjoy but the thing is a lot of the same guys who think that way believed in Santa and those characters as kids and he thought that there was enough of that stuff in the movie where wide range of people can enjoy it enjoyed they wanted to turn this into the next Shrek where you thought he knew her characters like snow white or even Fiona as the typical Disney princess will play out and react to the situation they are being put in but end up being twisted on its head something there was novel at the time but and it have been parodied even within Shrek itself a movie that bows down to the Avengers with The Sandman and the Easter Bunny turns into Justice League but with this a man and the Easter Bunny too dark too much not the right time which funnily enough seemed to be right after as the movie did somehow manage to ghana and massive cult following thanks to streaming services we found out of its main character Jack Frost being on a similar level as frozen elsa and only the weirdest fan animations featuring the two so I guess it alternately worked out for us at the Guardians over time and they am not trying to convince DreamWorks to try and get a series out the ground so if you're interested in that at all I'll put some links in the description and you can go support them there maybe it'll turn out to be a bigger success than it was at the time eventually because I'm pretty sure that even DreamWorks gave up on this movie as they signed the deal with Fox it seemed like such a lost cause at this point and while Ramsay moved on to work on into the spider-verse with Sony DreamWorks was scrambling to find another original story they would put them back into the green so they made three the Kreutz turbo and mr. Peabody and Sherman marked the first time in more than half a decade more than two original DreamWorks stories were released in a row and all of them were met with moralists positive critical reception but since both of the latter two underperformed at the box office this endeavor was met with a fate equal to that of rise of the Guardians but the company had been faced with a return of seventy two point six million dollars in total while not as big a flop stars at the Guardians colossal marketing miscalculation thanks to a deal with Netflix I just wasn't a market for a nostalgia piece for two characters that have been collecting dust since the 60s and cars but with snails and war baby yes to love you this was when things started to look somewhat concerning when Rhys thought the Guardians came out it was easy to just ignore the film and move on to something else but when only one of the three upcoming movies managed to turn a profit it makes you wonder whether DreamWorks would still remain as relevant and it happened a few years before with a new movie or not this was still the same year both the massively successful frozen and nukem Illuminations despicable 2 came out which collectively grossed more at the box office than dreamworks last 5 pictures combined but it's both How to Train Your Dragon 2 and the first actual spin-off to the other popular Madagascar franchise we're about to come out the company would soon be put at ease of course How to Train Your Dragon would do well that much was guaranteed and the last time they made a spin-off of one of the characters were 2011 Puss in Boots it was a huge success so what could possibly go wrong except for yet another write down of 57 million dollars this came as a surprise the film cost significantly less to make than any of the other previous Madagascar films and was met with fair reception even though personally I feel somewhat conflict about just how much I don't like it regardless the movie ended up performing well at the box office which they had likely hope for since it had actually taken Holmes place as the movie to come out in the latter half of the year but the damage of some of the previous efforts could apparently still be felt at DreamWorks which had already announced around this time that the collective an affirmance of Peabody and Sherman penguins and turbo would result in a layoff of 500 employees with even Katzenberg describing 2014 as a challenging year for the company yeah you stay humble death the scaling back that happened as a result of not just some of their original movies but even spin off two beloved franchises flopping not only makes them go back to two films a year but outright canceled projects that have been in limbo for a while like monkeys a Mumbai and the bureau of otherworldly operations with the latter seeming to have done quite far into production since various full renders and merchandise such as storybooks could already be found on Amazon emphasizing how abruptly they were first to cut the breaks it seems that for a while Katzenberg seemed determined they would be able to sustain themselves off their TV market and merchandise alone which granted we're doing really well thanks to shows like the Penguins of Madagascar but as the next feature home came around there was a great deal of concern to be felt at the studio despite the way they presented themselves to the public they had only been able to get at one movie that year which was met with the worst critical reception they got since 2004 Shark Tale with the main criticisms being a lack of inspiration and too heavy a focus on the stoppe horror involved concerns they were expressed with some other of their major flops in the past not like this was a huge surprise there was a reason they delayed this one in favor of the Penguins but they did work closely together with Rihanna to try and at least make the soundtrack iconic too bad the last time they made the film soundtrack at selling point was the road to El Dorado how many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man go to the point where DreamWorks was forced to outsource some of the upcoming projects like Captain Underpants released not very subtly right after the first boss baby movie to try and regain the family-friendly image they fear to have lost things to some of the efforts like rise of the Guardians with boss baby equally uncertainly being turned into a TV series right after and a sequel being announced before the first was even released clearly wanted to expand that heavey market even further and bank on films they knew we're going to be easy successes well rather not dealing with difficult to had a project such as How to Train Your Dragon 3 which after years of delays was finally put out in 2019 this was also in large part due to the financial troubles dreamers found itself in from 2012 to 2014 citing an intent to quote maximize the company's creative talent and resources reduce costs and drive profitability a strategy that would also mean that for the first time since 99 no new movie was released in 2018 so where are we at today as of the time of writing the script there are 5 new dream expose announced that we know of all of which follow that no strategy of releasing to year 3 of them being sequels to the established properties this seems to be the new old business model moving forward as in 2016 NBC Universal CEO Steve Berg stated that they will take the existing DreamWorks franchises to add value and taking the low single digit returns of the movie business and turned it into a different kind of business this was right after DreamWorks Animation was bought by Universal allowing the shades and animated movies to be divided amongst DreamWorks and the now much more profitable illumination at one point it was even discussed if in light of this the two company should be merged into one seeing as how illuminations approached a low effort CGI filmmaking a wide appeal and easy marketability thanks to merchandising and celebrity appeal was not much different from a dream access turned into ever since the second track came out so with some real master and apprentice type cheese for the first time in the company's history even cat smirk had to give up control to illumination CEO chrismedonne Rhee has had a both companies to oversee all the creative decisions what Katzenberg would remain head of DreamWorks new media likely signifying a shift to further commercialize all their films and frankly scale back artistic integrity in their films even further and that's not me being mean-spirited I like DreamWorks I grew up on many of their films the majority of them while not artistic models on the same level as their competitors could still be considered entertaining to the extent that they don't just try to bait you into theaters and buy the merchandise but actually has something to them that would make you come back but a question that I still have to keep myself asking after all these ups and downs and then finally seeming to be on the right track in some ways is what is that exactly what makes you come back to watch a DreamWorks movie like say about illumination what he may they by no means Saints are the most respectable animation company out there for all its words they have an identity in producing harmless character driven kids films that no one will ever likely put on any top 10 but still have a fixed audience that knows what they going in for Pixar despite having taken some very minor missteps over the past years but still very much be considered a company known for its excellent storytelling groundbreaking visuals that stand the test of time and even tackling summer series things you get to experience more as you grow older but for how many movies even remix animation alone has brought out since its inception and it's hard for me to pin down even one aspect that stayed consistent in all their movies the closest we've ever gotten to something like that was back when Shrek came out a movie which many consider to be the edgiest animated film to date followed up by the even edgier Shark Tale and spirit oh wow so edgy with you but I think edgy I think beautiful landscape shots with horses running over meadows and Brian Adams you know and this complete lack of any discerning theme or element to guarantee them a market for the movies is ultimately going to be their downfall how do I know that because it happened twice before arguably even three times if you take the other geffen mentioned back in 2005 into account but then he was likely referring to the failure there was the live-action movie the island yeah not even there non animated features were exempt from all this I would argue though that it was even more clear with a snowball effect of her as of the Guardians which may have not necessarily led them to the cusp of bankruptcy but was still their biggest layoff in the company's history what's very likely trying to maintain their cool to the press in order to not have a similar situation of where the hype over a new company couldn't live up to the expectations set for them because of that although many of these movies are considered flops financially even majority were able to recoup their budget at the box-office meaning that the reasons they failed were usually grounded in marketing and other factors behind the scenes and that DreamWorks had much bigger hopes in them that they could ever hope to feasibly turn into a profit and it sucks because many of their biggest disappointments I would consider much more worthy of being seen by many than the other ones that ended up doing well financially I would take a flushed away or Sinbad or restrict the third any day the animation on that woman's are nominal the same issue Sinbad had on a market already aching for something new back in 2004 again happened in 2012 when dream expressed or intended for an edgy and gritty CG movie to break the mold with rise of the Guardians in neither case that the marketing do the film's any favors as they kept pushing the idea of trying to compare to other dreamers features when the company itself had noticed rainy qualities that would unify these films and make it worthwhile for the average moviegoer that isn't necessarily enthralled by any animated movie there comes out especially on a market already over flooded with so many of them around the time while in the beginning dream arcs in the eyes of many including itself may have seemed like a worthy and main contender to Disney's monopoly on animated movies around this time other companies like illumination and Sony have since come to claim its rightful place and in many ways even surpassed the success of DreamWorks yeah the future of the company is looking much brighter now than it did whenever they were in a Marber carry financial situation only time will tell of their model of only so-so films wrinkled in with the occasional hit is going to serve them well or if in ten years from now we are going to experience a revolution in the same vein as they had once started to put their pushing forward on a market dominated by CG animation once that gonna happen we'll just have to wait and see one thing's for sure though they'll never stay afloat without a good website from Squarespace Squarespace is the supreme website builder out there I've been incredibly excited to work with them for a while now and just out of my own website since it's so simple and so intuitive and can I just say it turned out beautifully alongside tons of awesome templates you also get features like detailed analytics the ability to schedule posts on your site to all your other social media all at once all of which is built in from the start without any need for prior knowledge on how to build your website and what's more you can just directly purchase your own domain from the site without the hassle of having to set it up somewhere else and then connect it 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Channel: Cosmodore

Views: 514,744

Rating: 4.9405513 out of 5

Keywords: cosmodore, rise of the guardians, dreamworks, sinbad, flop, bankrupt, disney, lion king, frozen, jeffrey katzenberg, failure, animation, video essay, cartoons, review, illumination, steven spielberg, disney vs dreamworks, megamind

Id: dLa7xe5GTWw

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019