Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How To Construct A Dream...


The Hollywood Reporter has all the inside nuts and bolts of the Disney/DreamWorks deal...

Give it a read if you're curious about such things, or happen to want to know what mezzanine financing is.

Oh and as has been discussed, when this deal was announced, many a Disney Fan/Geek's first thought was: "what about a Spielberg created Disney attraction?" Well over at Slashfilm, they've tried to put the breaks on this idea in a post entitled: "Why Steven Spielberg Won’t Contribute To Disney Theme Parks." They could be right, but all is not lost...

What Peter Sciretta, the author of the piece doesn't mention or hasn't heard is that Universal recently was asking the director to renegotiate his 2% fee on the parks. Here's a quote from Deadline Hollywood Daily:

"Spielberg was irritated that Universal came to him asking to renegotiate his longstanding 2% theme parks consulting deal dating back to the days when Lew Wasserman/Sid Sheinberg controlled the studio. These days, that's worth $50 million a year to the director. And Universal also asked to delay for 5 years Spielberg's '"put" deal -- his right to have the studio buy him out of the parks deal in a year."
- Nikki Finke

Spielberg balked. If they press the issue and he walks away from that deal we'll see if Disney would be willing to have him design an attraction with Imagineers.

I wonder what he'd do?

5 comments:

Denise said...

I have no idea what he'd design for Disney, but if the Wii game Boom Blox is any indicator, it will be of very high quality. How exciting.

Anonymous said...

Don't believe me?

Wow, you sound more and more like Jim Hill every day...

Anonymous said...

What is it about you people and your obsession with that guy?

Anonymous said...

Why would Disney WANT the kind of deal that Spielberg has with Universal?!?
Let's pay Spielberg an annual royalty fee instead of designing our own properties with our own people for free!

Anonymous said...

Universal Studios theme park is what I meant.