DreamWorks Cutting Costs; Only Producing 2 Movies Per Year

DreamWorks Animation has officially announced plans to restructure their business, including cutting their movie slate back to just two films per year. The reasoning for the change is to bring down costs, with the cutbacks meaning 500 jobs will be lost, equating to 17% of the company’s current workforce.

The studio revealed that out of the two films they’ll be releasing per year, which is due to start in 2016, one of the films will be an original project and one will be a sequel. Additionally, some projects may be outsourced in an attempt to keep costs down.

As a result, the newly announced line-up of DreamWorks films now features:

KUNG FU PANDA 3 – March 18th, 2016

TROLLS – November 4th, 2016

BOSS BABY – Jan 13th, 2017

THE CROODS 2 – December 22nd, 2017

THE LARRIKINS – February 16th, 2018

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 – June 29th, 2018

Before those pictures hit the big screen, HOME will be released on March 27th of this year. On the change of policy, CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said, “We want to get back to basics here and just do an outstanding job on two movies a year. Much of my time and efforts in the last couple years have been focused on expanding the company into these other businesses. It’s now time for me to turn my attention back to the core business.”

Despite HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 being the highest-grossing animated movie of last year, bringing home an impressive $619 million globally, other movies, such as MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN, RISE OF THE GUARDIANS and TURBO massively underperformed. Things also haven’t been helped by PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR recently bombing.

Going forward, as well as producing less movies, each one will now cost less as well. Rather than the $145 million that is usually spent on a DreamWorks Animation effort, each film will be given a budget of around $120 million.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW OR ON TWITTER @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local STARBURST stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. For our digital edition (available to read on your iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows 8, Samsung and/or Huawei device – all for just £1.99), visit MAGZTER DIGITAL NEWSSTAND.