Dreamworks Skg

DreamWorks SKG, the movie studio founded by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg that has been chafing under ownership of media giant Viacom Inc., is in talks with a number of potential investors, including one of India's biggest entertainment concerns, to raise financing to become an independent company once again. But a person familiar with the situation cautioned that talks were fluid and no deal was imminent.

With divorce between DreamWorks SKG and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures a given, the only issue now is who gets custody of the children. Like custody battles anywhere, this one could get nasty. In the coming weeks, DreamWorks will begin the complicated business of dissolving their bitter 2 1/2 -year union, leaving in limbo hundreds of movie projects, employees, talent and producers who work for the company.

Anil Ambani is a major player in Bollywood. He has designs on being the same in Hollywood. The Indian billionaire owns movie production facilities and theater chains in his homeland, as well as a piece of an Indian post-production company, Prime Focus Group, that lately has been acquiring similar firms in Hollywood. His wife is Tina Munim, a famous Bollywood actress and former Miss India. Now Ambani is making a play for a major share of the Hollywood limelight.

Ending a short-lived and bitter relationship, DreamWorks SKG, the movie studio founded by Steven Spielberg, and Paramount Pictures said Sunday that a deal had been struck to part ways. The pact, resembling an amicable divorce settlement with joint custody of about 40 movie projects, came rather smoothly and faster than expected in light of the tense relations between the two studios. Paramount's parent, Viacom Inc., acquired DreamWorks for $1.6 billion in 2006.

In a move that brings Steven Spielberg closer to reestablishing his independence, Universal Pictures will distribute the movies produced by the filmmaker's new DreamWorks studio. However, Spielberg and partner Stacey Snider's ambitious plans to fund their venture have been slowed by the global credit crisis. The new DreamWorks is seeking to raise about $1.2 billion in equity and debt to operate the company and fund movie production.

It was a quarter-century in the making, but then again, nothing is easy for cartoon heroes such as Tintin. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks, a division of Viacom Inc., has committed to produce at least one movie about the adventures of the intrepid Belgian reporter, said Nick Rodwell, head of Moulinsart NV, Tintin's commercial studio in Brussels. "After 25 years, they finally said, 'OK, let's go,' " Rodwell said Thursday of the protracted talks with Spielberg.

Steven Spielberg has finally landed "The Lovely Bones." After years of pursuing the movie rights to Alice Sebold's 2004 bestseller, the DreamWorks SKG co-founder won a bidding war Friday to finance the movie, to be directed by Peter Jackson of "The Lord of the Rings" fame. This ends a weeklong negotiation. Three other major studios -- Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. -- also vied for the right to bankroll Jackson's next movie.

Jennifer Aniston may need to brush up on her yodeling, banjo and steel guitar now that she's producing the period country-and-western musical "Goree Girls" for DreamWorks Pictures. The actress is on board to produce and probably star in the 1940s song-laden comedy about one of the nation's first all-female country acts, a group whose members were also guests of the Texas penal system.

With every studio in Hollywood looking to tap into "Harry Potter" and "Chronicles of Narnia" fever, DreamWorks Studios is placing its bet on the magical "Children of the Lamp" series. DreamWorks has licensed the film rights to "Children of the Lamp," author P.B. Kerr's popular series of novels about globe-trotting twin tweens who learn that they are from a family of djinn, or genies, who pass for human but have the power to grant wishes.

While liberals of a certain age continue to bemoan the lack of protests and demonstrations against the Iraq war, in swoop Steven Spielberg and Aaron Sorkin to remind the nation about the politically tumultuous summer of 1968. Sorkin, the writer behind "The West Wing" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," has been hired by Spielberg's DreamWorks to draft three screenplays.