Spielberg Out At DreamWorks--Not

You've got to give the folks at Radar.com some points for still swaying in the ring, Jake LaMotta style, after their "Spielberg Out At DreamWorks" story took punches all day. The mere premise baffled most commentators--the headline was the equivalent of "Sun Out At Solar System". Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg started the company--originally named DreamWorks SKG, to drive the point home--as partners and co-investors, and even if through some quirky clause Geffen could oust the key creative partner he has made a fierce mission of protecting, why would he give the in-play company a gut shot like that? It's an article of Hollywood faith that Spielberg is permanently atop the power structure, and if indeed DreamWorks is looking to get into business with Universal Studios when Spielberg's Paramount deal is up in October of next year, why would they subtract their key asset?

Nonetheless, although the Drudge Report effaced the item from their news front fairly promptly, as of day's end Radar.com still had it on their roster as "Most e-mailed" for the past seven days, and opening it led to the following interesting addendum:

UPDATE: Marvin Levy, spokesman for Spielberg returned Radar's call this morning and later got back to us to say: "This story is incorrect. Everybody who knows the DreamWorks deal and the Spielberg deal at Viacom knows that he is fireproof." Radar stands by its source.

The normal phrase would be, "stands by its story", or "stands by its reporting", but this wording would seem to be a variation on the old barroom dodge, "Let's you and him fight." The cynical if not illogical theory is that a planted story got botched in the telling.

En route to posting, the site apparently made a fruitless call to Levy, Spielberg's longtime praiser (as the trades say), but not DreamWorks corporate p.r. (Fact-checking can really get in the way of a late-in-the day, er, scoop.)

Word from inside DreamWorks is that Spielberg had a good laugh over it. After being the key character in a series of published accounts culminating in Bryan Burroughs' highly readable Vanity Fair article on the battle--whoops, now they're all cordial again--between Geffen and Sumner Redstone, the Indy 4 director must have developed a fairly thick skin. Conventional wisdom holds that nothing would please him more than to change the logo that sits on the movie posters next to the DreamWorks name, losing the Paramount mountain in favor of the Universal globe. (His company's own moniker is safe from Redstone's clutches, as it's owned by DreamWorks animation, run by Katzenberg). The director is already lodged in his longtime compound on the Uni lot, and as his key production executive, Stacey Snider, has a key man clause, he could almost certainly bring her with him. Then the first order of business would have to be to get a new slate up--even as Paramount, now claiming that their upcoming releases will reverse the trend in which DreamWorks served as the cash cow amidst Paramount's home-brewed box office misses, still has DreamWorks features in their distribution pipeline.
(See stills and the one-sheet from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull here, the film's extravaganza of a web site here, and my post on the shoot at Yale University here.)

The G.E. kingpins back east originally had an offer on the table for DreamWorks, but when Michael Bay's The Island flopped, they subtracted $100 million to Geffen's ire. Viacom's Tom Freston flew out to help wrap up the Paramount deal with his friend Geffen, then installed Brad Grey to run production. Now Freston is gone from Paramount (recently joining the DreamWorks Animation board) and Grey is juggling calls from the somewhat mollified Geffen, the unpredictable Redstone, and Viacom C.E.O. Philip Dauman, who first dissed Spielberg (see my earlier post), then more recently praised him to the skies.

As the linked companies hold high hopes for the seasonal entrant Sweeney Todd, the future seems to offer little hope for an extension of the marriage. But even Redstone, the demon barber of Melrose Avenue, has neither the chops nor the contractual ability to send Spielberg plunging
down a chute with his throat cut.

(Steven Spielberg and Brad Grey on Oscar night 2006; photo by Eric Charbonneau/ WireImage)