Steven Spielberg has found his DreamWorks partner in the form of Walt Disney. Disney’s Touchstone division, which markets and releases films that veer away from the safer branding of the animated or family oriented pictures, will distribute about six DreamWorks movies a year beginning in 2010. The news is a relief to Spielberg who had partnered with an Indian-based finance company to seed the studio up to $500 million to make movies; now that he has a North American distributor guaranteed, things will go a lot faster for these new DreamWorks movies to get made.
This now gives Spielberg the financial and distribution clout that he’s sought for after resurrecting DreamWorks from its original inception as a place where the leading edge of filmmakers can make the pictures that they want to. Everyone in the biz had wagered that Spielberg would have hitched his trailer with Universal Pictures, the company where he made Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park and where he currently has an office on the backlot.
Now comes the part of the game where we find out what kind of new movies Spielberg has in mind for the new DreamWorks. He doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room for making mistakes and needs more Gladiator-like kind of movies — the ones that are both a box office success as well as win Oscars — rather than make more Revolutionary Roads. He needs a new E.T. or Jurassic Park to show that DreamWorks is a shining star and not a falling star.
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