Dream Works Animation

Dream Works Animation

DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (NASDAQ: DWA) is an American animation studio based in Glendale, California that creates animated feature films, television programs, and online virtual worlds. They have released a total of twenty-five feature films, including the franchises of Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon. As of October 2012, its feature films have made over $10 billion worldwide, with its $430 million average gross by far the highest of any studio in the industry. Four of DreamWorks Animation's films—Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek Forever After, and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, and fifteen of the films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films, with Shrek 2 being the fourth all-time highest.

Even though the studio also made traditionally-animated films about serious subjects earlier, such as The Prince of Egypt, Joseph: King of Dreams, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, most of their computer-generated films and television series have now gained the studio a reputation for being focused on humor and satire although their most successful recent franchises have it balanced with more dramatic narratives.

The studio was formed by the merger of the feature animation division of DreamWorks and Pacific Data Images (PDI). Originally formed under the banner of DreamWorks in 1997 by some of Amblin Entertainment's former animation branch Amblimation alumni, it was spun off into a separate public company in 2004. DreamWorks Animation currently maintains two campuses: the original DreamWorks feature animation studio in Glendale, California and the PDI studio in Redwood City, California.

Films produced by DreamWorks Animation were fomerly distributed worldwide by Paramount Pictures, a subsidiary of Viacom, who acquired the DreamWorks live-action studio in February 2006, spinning it off again in 2008. In 2013, however, 20th Century Fox, a subsidiary of News Corporation, will distribute DreamWorks Animation films for a 5-year-deal.