DreamWorks SKG: Home for Dinner, Three Best Pictures and a Rented Logo

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In 1994 Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen founded DreamWorks SKG, the first new major Hollywood studio since 1928. Their pact promised fewer than nine films a year, freedom to work elsewhere and being home for dinner. Each put in $33 million, Paul Allen added $500 million and Miky Lee of South Korea's CJ Group $300 million. Based on the Universal lot, they launched television with ABC, producing Spin City; DreamWorks Interactive with Microsoft, which made Medal of Honor; and DreamWorks Records, signing George Michael, Eels, Papa Roach and Nelly Furtado. The games unit went to Electronic Arts in 2000 and the label to Universal Music in 2003.

Saving Private Ryan lost Best Picture to Miramax's Shakespeare in Love at the 1999 Oscars amid talk of a Harvey Weinstein campaign. DreamWorks then won three straight Best Pictures with American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind, yet Geffen said it nearly went bankrupt twice. Sinbad lost $125 million, and unsold Shrek 2 DVDs forced write-downs. Animation was spun off in a 2004 IPO, a roughly $1.5 billion NBC Universal deal collapsed when GE sought about $100 million off, and Viacom bought the live-action studio for $1.6 billion in 2006. A Paramount speech at the Dreamgirls premiere preceded a 2008 split funded by $1.2 billion from India's Reliance.

• Spielberg insisted the DreamWorks logo appear before Paramount's on co-productions.
• From 2011 to 2016 its films were released through Disney's Touchstone Pictures banner.
• Flops such as Cowboys and Aliens and I Am Number Four cut output to three films a year.
• In 2015 DreamWorks Pictures became a label for adult-themed films inside Amblin Partners, distributed by Universal.
• The live-action company now licenses the DreamWorks name and boy-on-the-moon logo from DreamWorks Animation.