Steven Spielberg's film company DreamWorks Studios has been in financial trouble for some time, with many in the movie industry uncertain of its future. The studio has now been bailed out to the tune of $200 million from its private financier, India's Reliance Entertainment. With the major investment, though, comes a serious scaling-back of DreamWorks' ambitions, the Los Angeles Times reports.
In 2009, the studio announced plans to release six films per year, though that has now been reduced to three to five films per year, starting in 2013. They will also ensure that they seek co-financiers on all of their big-budget movies from now on. 20th Century Fox are reportedly already on board to co-finance Robopocalypse and Lincoln. DreamWorks employs around 80 staff members, They recently lost their head of marketing, Christine Birch, to FilmDistrict. They currently do not plan to replace her but will instead share her role amongst existing marketing employees. It's been a tough time for DreamWorks at the box office, with Cowboys and Aliens and Fright Night doing badly, as did I Am Number Four. The Oscar nominated drama The Help did just that for the studio, but did not make a significant enough impact on their accounts to transform the studio's fortunes.
According to the Los Angeles Times blog, "DreamWorks' troubles reflect a larger trend in Hollywood, in which independent movie studios that don't have reliable cash flow from a library of movies or some other business are struggling to survive when they don't release a string of hits."