DreamWorks Will Eventually Reinvent ‘Voltron,’ ‘Masters Of The Universe’ And Other Properties
In 2012,DreamWorks Animationacquired the library ofClassic Media, a company that owns the rights to many pop culture brands. Some examples areMasters of the Universe, Voltron, Rocky and Bulwinkle, Lassie, Mr. MagooandWhere’s Waldo, but the company owns even more than that. As far as the public knows, nothing has really happened with the purchase yet but, the CEO of the company revealed the plans are big.
Jeffrey Katzenbergbelieves the Classic Media library is to DreamWorks what the Marvel library is to Disney. And, in the future, the company plans to “reinvent” these franchises.The Wrapreported on these quotes, which came from the same Keynote where Katzenbergtalked about wanting to spend$75 million for moreBreaking Badepisodes. He talks about that at 33:50, but for the Classic Media stuff, you’ll want to go to 28:50.
Here’s the most important quote:
It’s not, ‘What are we going to do with those 6,100 episodes we have’ … although we’ll get value out of those … the real opportunity is to take every one of those franchises and reinvent them. And that’s what we will set out to do.
You can look at the entireClassic Media libraryat that link. Click on “Portfolio.” It’s impressive to say the least. It also includes a lot of properties that we’ve already seen movies for at other studios –Mr. Magoo, Lone Ranger, Transformers Godzilla, Lassie, Dick Tracyand others. So I’m not quite sure how those work out. I’m also not quite sure how the long in-development live action films forVoltronandMasters of the Universewill be affected by this. But – the main take away is, a few years down the road, we might get DreamWorks Animated films based onVoltron, He-Man, Lassieand more. And that’s something to look forward to.
