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Announcement tonight: DreamWorks, Imagine form Net group funded by Allen
Reuters ú UPI
DreamWorks, Imagine form Net group funded by Allen
Updated 9:58 PM ET October 25, 1999
By Bob Tourtellotte
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Film companies DreamWorks and Imagine Entertainment, backed by top Hollywood movie makers such as Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard, Monday unveiled a new company to produce shows for the Internet using cash from billionaire investor Paul Allen.
The powerhouse combination of Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg from DreamWorks and Ron Howard and Brian Grazer from Imagine immediately puts the new partnership, POP.com, on the map of entertainment companies making cutting edge video programs for the Net.
POP.com plans its debut for spring 2000, and once up and running will produce mostly comedic stories using live action, animation and video-on-demand in small, 1- to 6-minute episodes. It also plans live events on the Web.
"The Internet offers unlimited potential as a new entertainment arena," said Spielberg, adding that he looks forward to exploring the Net's "potential."
The partnership promises "immediate, raw and interactive" programming chock full of interactive features like chat, instant messaging, and other "community building" features.
It also wants its Web users to create their own programs and submit them for distribution on the site. POP.com aims to be free to users and derive revenues from advertising, sponsorship, e-commerce and other methods.
"Sounds like fun to me," Howard said.
MTV OF THE INTERNET
Katzenberg likened POP.com to the MTV of the Internet, saying that just as MTV created a new venue for emerging music videos, POP.com hopes to offer a "new form of entertainment for the rapidly growing population of Internet users."
The partnership will be funded by Vulcan Ventures, the investment arm of Microsoft Corp. co-founder Allen, who was recently named the world's third richest man by Forbes magazine with a net worth over $30 billion.
Details of the financing, the size of Allen's investment and the partnerships formal structure were not disclosed.
In 1994, Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen founded DreamWorks SKG to be a new film studio specializing in state-of-the-art, digital filmmaking and TV production. Allen signed on as one of DreamWorks' original investors.
Some of its plans, such as building a new digital studio of the future at a site in Los Angeles called Playa Vista, have not worked out. But it has been able to produce some very successful movies like last year's "Saving Private Ryan." Its most recent movie "American Beauty" is one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the current fall season.
Grazer and Howard formed Imagine in 1986 and have gone on to make highly successful films like "Splash", "Apollo 13", "Ransom" and "Liar, Liar". They also make the critically successful TV shows "Felicity" for the WB network and "Sports Night" for ABC.
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