26 Apr 2016
Jeffrrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG Image: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Comcast Corp. is in talks to buy DreamWorks Animation SKG, and the price being tossed around is more than $3Billion, according to a report from Wall Street Journal.
DreamWorks Animation currently has an estimated $2.3 Billion market value, so the price being discussed is quite an uplift.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation has had several attempts to sell the company in recent years, including previous talks with Hasbro and Viacom/Paramount. None of those resulted in a sale. Katzenberg then diversified with the purchase of Awesomeness TV and went through a restructuring of the company which resulted in more limited offering of releases, causing stocks to plummet in 2013, but then work their way back up after the successful releases of Home and How to Train Your Dragon 2.
DreamWorks Animation brought us Shrek, the Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar, and How to Train Your Dragon franchises. Their most recent releases included Trolls and DinoTrux.
The Philadelphia-based giant cable company, Comcast also owns Universal Pictures film studio and would likely merge DreamWorks Animation with Universal Pictures, which also has an animation business (Illumination Entertainment) that makes the Despicable Me films.