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SPIELBERG GOES BOLLYWOOD!

August 12th, 2008 by Scott Marks

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In a textbook example of garbage finding its own level, two of the most revolting developments in cinema over the past 30 years are joining forces as Steve Spielberg hops the road to Bollywood. I’d rather sit through Hook again than one of those weightless Bombay song and dance caravans.

Variety is reporting that DreamWorks looks to be closing in on a deal with India’s Reliance ADA Group that would help Steve Spielberg “start fresh and DreamWorks to reboot” after Paramount gave the studio the boot. Steve and David Geffen may announce the merger as soon as this week.

The company was born soon after third-Stooge Jeffrey Katzenberg’s 1994 resignation from Walt Disney. The founding partners each put up $33 million in addition to $500 million dollars Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen coughed up to sweeten the pushke. The studio’s first feature was the 1997 Mimi Leder bomb The Peacemaker starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. Budgeted at $50 million, the film had a $12 million opening weekend and fell $10 million shy of recouping its budget.

The studio found success in animated features and in spite of a lot of high grossing titles, there’s not but one decent picture (Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron) in the bunch. There were cookie cutter Antz, a feature set in a toilet and a school of sharks that should have been flushed away. Appropriately, their biggest hits all rhyme with “dreck.” I made an early exit from the first Shrek and never looked back. The unappealing, badly designed computer generated characters spouting endless pages of sitcom dialog made me pine for Bucky and Pepito.

Artistically speaking, their live-action features fared only slightly better than their pixilated counterparts. Of the little over one hundred features released by the studio, only 7 are worthy of your time:Small Time Crooks, American Beauty, the remake of War of the Worlds, the remake of The Heartbreak Kid, The Cat in the Hat, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Dreamgirls.

I’M KIDDING! Do you think I’m cutting my Paxil with Testor’s glue? Come to think of it, I’d rather sniff glue than ever again asphyxiate myself on one of those clunkers. Here are the few pearls cast amidst the DreamWorks swine: Small Soldiers (the only decent thing that Steve’s ever done is backing Joe Dante), Chicken Run, Paycheck, The Chumscrubber, Match Point, Letters from Iwo Jima and Perfume.

Will Columbia replace Paramount as DreamWorks distribution arm?

Quality be damned: DreamWorks took home three consecutive Best Picture Oscars (American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind) and many of their releases hit pay dirt at the box office. In December 2005, Paramount agreed to fork over $1.6 billion for the the live-action studio. With it came Steve, a 60 film library and the right to distribute DreamWorks Animation. Nikki Finke called the purchase “a veritable steal” and predicted “the deal will be in the black ahead of schedule.”

The relationship between DreamWorks and Paramount has become tenuous at best. (Note that Steve still calls Universal his home base.) According to Wikipedia, “In recent years, DreamWorks has scaled back. It stopped plans to build a high-tech studio, sold its music division, and has only produced a few television series, Las Vegas, Carpoolers, and On the Lot, for example. Recently, David Geffen admitted that DreamWorks had come close to bankruptcy twice. Under Katzenberg’s watch, the studio suffered a $125 million loss on Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and also overestimated the DVD demand for Shrek 2. In 2005, out of their two large budget pictures, The Island bombed at the domestic box office, while War of the Worlds was produced as a joint effort with Paramount which was the first to reap the profits.”

Still, the studio persevered. In 2006, their top two grossing films (Dreamgirls and Transformers) took in $1.6 billion.

Talk of DreamWorks saying “Bye-bye, Hollywood” and “Hello, Mumbai” had been circulating for months. In June, Variety’s Anne Thompson speculated, “Some industry observers are wondering if wily negotiator David Geffen isn’t using Reliance as a bargaining chip in yet another high-stakes studio play.” Now it appears as if the $1 billion Reliance deal could be cemented this week. Steve is allowed to keep the DreamWorks name and if all goes as planned, he can exit Paramount as early as November.

The deal would restore DreamWorks independence as well as heightening Bollywood’s worldwide visibility. This is not India’s first collaboration with foreign studios. According to the Canadian Press, “Over the last two years Indian movie houses have signed co-production deals with Viacom, Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp.”

There is an outside chance that Paramount could still distribute DreamWorks releases, particularly in light of the upcoming Transformers sequel.

Whatever you do, Steve, NO MUSICALS! Don’t let Indian money-men Rajesh Sawhney and Anil Dhirubhai Ambani influence you. Unless Joe Dante agrees to direct, I don’t want to see your name attached to any of that plotless, sari-swirling swill accompanied by a score that sounds like tennis rackets being plucked with the cat-gut still in the kitty. The only Indian you need worry your head over is Indian(a) Jones.

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Comments

One Response to “SPIELBERG GOES BOLLYWOOD!”

  1. Joel Wicklund on August 13th, 2008 9:27 am

    Man, until your story made me check out the studio’s output on IMDB, I didn’t realize how many forgettables and regrettables DreamWorks was responsible for. A poor track record indeed.

    But “Chumscrubber” as a “pearl”? Good lord, what where you on when you watched that? And how can I get a hold of some? It was a wretched “American Beauty” knockoff combined with a poor, starving man’s take on “Donnie Darko.” “Chumscrubber” is to “Darko” what “When Harry Met Sally” is to “Annie Hall.” Yikes.

    I’d replace that atrocity with “Galaxy Quest” (very funny) or “Flags of Our Fathers” (warts and all).

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