With the recent purchase of Dreamworks by Viacom, has come a new CEO for the company Stacey Snider, who is the past chairman of Universal Pictures. She began work there on April 15.
With a venue that is much smaller than the $1 billion a year she had to work with at Universal, some insiders have been asking out loud whether she will be content with managing a much smaller budget.
Still, she has started quickly by getting to know all the current projects slated for 2007 and has presented them to their distributor Paramount Pictures. Already their are eight pictures in the pipeline, up from the original four to six projected. Some are thinking that Paramount Chairman Brad Grey may increase that business with Dreamworks because of the lack of experience of his production crew.
Snider is working with Spielberg to spread the annual budget between $300 to $400 million among its projects and is learning how to flow with him saying, "I can't filter or predict Steven," she said. "I'm riding the surf with him. We let him respond to things. And he loves to hear from us about what we're excited about. He's so wonderfully creatively engaged. He's interested in movies of all sizes and genres, even tiny little movies that we're not sure are commercial. That's of no concern as long as we have other movies that are."
Overall this sounds really good with things getting going rapidly and there seems to be new life in Dreamworks, who I've personally always liked, but have seemed of the verge of collapsing. Hopefully this new team will get their creative juices flowing and create some great hits. They really need some after their problems over the last several years.
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