Dreamworks/Paramount--The Way Forward?

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One of the more intriguing notes in Anne Thompson's helpfully comprehensive take on Stacey Snider's quiet championship season at DreamWorks is the allusion to a way forward and past the recent Sumner Redstone-generated flap between DreamWorks and Paramount. Let's review: VIacom C.E.O. Phillippe Dauman (above, right, in a picture from the September 27 premiere of the DreamWorks/Paramount comedy, The Heartbreak Kid) ) on September 18 said losing DreamWorks and its fillmmaker-in-chief Steven Spielberg would be "immaterial", which might have been unwelcome sentiments to Spielberg's right hand, in-house producer, company C.E.O.Stacey Snider (second from right). Meanwhile, Jeffrey Katzenberg, third from right, who's reportedly been quite upset, along with his partners Spielberg and David Geffen, at the amount of credit assumed by Paramount topper Brad Grey (left), not only fired back in the press; he oversaw the election of Tom Freston, summarily dismissed by Redstone last September and replaced by Dauman, to the Board of Directors of DreamWorks Animation. (Under one plausible plank of Thompson's theory, below, Freston and Redstone would, oddly enough, be reunited. This even as Redstone engages in another family flare-up, this time with his daughter and presumed but hardly certain heir apparent Shari). Here's Thompson:

The most likely scenario (advanced peace talks are already under way): DreamWorks will stay and renegotiate its deal with more cash, or persuade Redstone to buy Katzenberg's DreamWorks Animation (two more "Shrek" sequels are promised). If DreamWorks were to leave, it might be tempting for Snider to remain behind and take charge of all her projects. But that's not likely to happen: Snider has cast her lot with Spielberg and with him she will remain.

Dauman has described the Los Angeles press as liking to "have fun" with the internecine wrangles at Paramount and DreamWorks; based on the body language in the above premiere photo, it seems that rumors of the death of the DreamWorks/Paramount arrangement may have been much exaggerated.

(Left to right, Brad Grey, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Stacey Snider, Philippe Dauman/Photo by Eric Charbonneau/WireImage)