stacey snider

It’s Official: DreamWorks, Universal Hitched

6:20AM STV | The Dept. of Forgone Conclusions forwarded a memo this morning confirming that DreamWorks has settled with Universal as its new distribution partner for the next five years, officially ending months of speculation and finally slicing the last thread connecting the ‘Works to its exes at Paramount. The partnership reinstates Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider’s working relationship with their old friends at the studio, but far more importantly, it sets up a potential blood feud with a nemesis no one dares face when push comes to shove. More »

Play the ‘DreamWorks Free to Good Home’ Sweepstakes

8:50AM Defamer Hollywood | They say nobody in Hollywood knows anything, which is true in just about every situation but the one facing DreamWorks and its partners at Paramount — a pair about as likely to split in acrimony within the year as Nikki Finke is to wheeze “TOLDJA!” when it happens. Patrick Goldstein today offers a rough primer for the ‘Works/’Mount divorce, with enough oversights and elisions to make it dispensable (for starters, whither UA in the potential coupling of DreamWorks and MGM?) but thought-provoking enough to ask: Where will the ‘Works wind up? More »

Stacey Snider Lines Up For Her Butt-Smooching

4:30AM Defamer Hollywood | With all the attention being paid to the damage done to Steven Spielberg’s ego when Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman said those two terrible little words, Var’s Anne Thompson reminds the Paramount powers-that-be that they’d better start kissing the DreamWorks tattoo on Stacey Snider’s arse right quick if they want to save the relationship. [Variety] More »

Socrates Was A Big Pussy

5:00AM Defamer Hollywood | Shouty mogul Barry Diller gets defensive when interrogated about having once made former Universal head Stacey Snider cry. Accusations of manipulative drama queen antics follow! “Oh please! Stacey Snider cries for effect in whatever room she might be in. I mean, I didn’t make Stacey Snider cry! Stacey Snider wanted to cry for her own demonstrative purposes. But, there’s no question that our process, my process, is one in which I believe that in order to get to the truth of something, you have to argue it passionately. It’s not a Socratic process by any stretch.” [Portfoilio] More »

Studios Already Shredding Hundred Dollar Bills For Use As “Summer Of Prosperity” Parade Confetti

7:30AM Defamer Hollywood | We’re nothing if not suckers for a nice feel-good story, especially when it’s accompanied by a fun chart where Spider-Man scales a pillar representing the obscene amounts of money some of our favourite movie studios are making: With four different films crossing the $US300 million mark, Hollywood is enjoying its Best Summer Ever, a period of prosperity that is erasing all memory of that nasty, alleged “Slump” of 2005, when executives were forced to answer all kinds of rude questions about why their shitty product wasn’t selling. During this new Golden Age of Very Profitable Threequels, they instead get to crow about how smart they are in the pages of Variety: “It’s proved that when you offer people great stories that also deliver state-of-the-art effects and stunts, they want to go out and experience it together. It becomes an event,” said DreamWorks CEO/co-chair Stacey Snider, whose studio and Paramount turned out “Transformers.” More »