The USA Today reports:
Comcast is in talks to buy DreamWorks Animation in a multi-billion-dollar deal, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are reporting. The cost of the deal would be more than $3 billion, according to both news organizations, citing unnamed sources. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, has been searching for a buyer for the company, which has a current market value of $2.3 billion. DreamWorks is based in Glendale, Calif., and was founded in 1994 by Katzenberg, filmmaker Steven Spielberg and movie and music executive David Geffen. The animation unit was spun off in 2004. Philadelphia-based Comcast has two primary businesses, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal. Comcast also owns Universal Parks and Resorts. Comcast already owns an animation studio, Illumination Entertainment, known for its work on the Despicable Me and Minions movies.
Comcast already owns NBCUniversal which owns Illumination Entertainment1.
When you’re an infrastructure company like Comcast Cable, you need to diversify into content or services lest you be left behind as a “dumb tube”.
However, I think the real play is against Netflix. The properties of DreamWorks have long been part of Netflix’s catalogue2. You can expect them to disappear when the rights are renewed if this deal goes through.