Paramount Pictures to launch big-budget animation unit
By Ryan Nakashima, Business Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Following the blockbuster success of “Rango,” Paramount Pictures said Wednesday that it is creating a division to make its own big-budget animated movies, putting the studio in competition with longtime partner DreamWorks Animation.
The new division will make one animated film per year with a fairly large budget by Hollywood standards — up to $100 million each. The first title is set for release in 2014.
Paramount’s first fully owned animated movie, “Rango,” charmed audiences. The flick, starring Johnny Depp as a chameleon in the Wild West, has grossed more than $240 million worldwide since its release in March.
Paramount’s chairman and chief executive, Brad Grey, said the studio is looking to produce more of its own material because it is more lucrative than simply distributing other studio’s pictures for a fee.
“It’s in our best interest at this point — with the global distribution business that we’ve built, as well as the great production pipeline — to own our own product,” Grey said in an interview.
The move will put a strain on its longtime agreement to distribute movies from DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., the maker of “Shrek” and “Kung Fu Panda.” Paramount has distributed two or three DreamWorks movies a year since 2006, earning 8 percent of the box office receipts and recouping all its marketing costs. The deal expires at the end of next year, and the two studios have not yet agreed to another deal.
Paramount has offered a one-year extension on the same terms, but it is looking to get a better deal for any extension beyond 2013, according to a person familiar with the studio’s thinking. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential.
Stifel Nicolaus analyst Ben Mogil said Paramount’s announcement suggests that it and DreamWorks will head their separate ways, to DreamWorks’ detriment.
“Clearly, a new in-house competitor to DreamWorks is a negative,” he wrote in a research note Wednesday.
Paramount plans to create characters in conjunction with Nickelodeon, a channel that is also owned by Paramount’s parent company, Viacom Inc. The plan is not just to make movies from characters on television such as “SpongeBob Squarepants,” but to develop Nickelodeon with fresh material as a film brand for families, Grey said.
“Every now and then you could see a SpongeBob, but hopefully we’ll come up with new franchises,” he said.
Paramount makes about 12 movies per year. Its latest release, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” had the biggest Fourth of July weekend opening ever, with nearly $116 million in tickets sold domestically. In one week, “Transformers” has raked in $404 million worldwide.
Effie UK and Ipsos Report Concludes Marketing Industry Should Do Its Part To Heal Societal Divisions
Society has never been more divided, according to a new report Healing the Divide in which Effie UK and brand and advertising experts from Ipsos explored brands’ role in shaping society and healing societal divisions.
The report details how instability, inflation, and COVID recovery —the convergence of multiple interconnected crises around the world that coincide with and amplify each other, causing hard to resolve systemic challenges, have become the norm over the past few years. As a result, the use of division as a weapon is now a major theme in today’s culture and politics, and sadly 47% of the UK and 49% of the US agree with the statement that “Within my lifetime, society in my country will break down,” according to Ipsos Global Trends 2024.
While some brands have tried to respond to this, the report finds responsible marketing is now threatened by weaponized division. It points to the World Federation of Advertisers’ decision to shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X, combined with DEI rollbacks, as significant setbacks.
The report says these setbacks underline the importance of marketing in solving collective problems, such as climate change, food security, and harmful online content. It also points to a need for marketers to take more interest in and more responsibility for healing divisions.
Research claims marketers are ideally placed to build and rebuild the antidote to division (trust, empathy, a sense of control, connection and collaboration). According to the Ipsos Veracity index of trusted professionals, society is becoming more trustworthy of advertising executives. Additionally, 57% of Britons agree that brands should communicate their... Read More