Viacom Buys Dreamworks:
You’ve probably heard that Viacom (home of Paramount Pictures) has bought the DreamWorks studio, ending the 11-year old dream of the three founders to create a different kind of movie studio. In the end, Steven Spielberg was still a director for hire, Jeffrey Katzenberg still ran a hot animation studio, just as he had done before at Disney, and David Geffen still marches to the beat of his own drummer. Dreamworks Records never got its footing at was sold to Universal Music Group in 2003.
The Dream, it seems, was a Pipe Dream. Actually, I stole this line from The Business, a fine NPR show about the business of entertainment. They did a whole episode on the failure of Dreamworks.