There's been no shortage of hits over the past five years for DreamWorks Animation and Paramount Pictures. For the last half decade, the latter has distributed the films of the former, but with the distribution deal up for renegotiation, the general feeling was that DreamWorks Animation would be looking for a different partner.
That was all-but-confirmed last week, when Paramount revealed that it was ramping up its own animated movie division, the first fruits of which is likely to be The Spongebob Squarepants Movie 2. And now it's been revealed that, once this winter's Rise Of The Guardians is out of the way, DreamWorks Animation and Paramount will be going their separate ways.
Instead, DreamWorks Animation has now done a deal with Fox, that will see the latter distribute its films for the next five years. Even as late as last week, Sony was still apparently in the running, too.
What's interesting about Fox is that it's a studio with a successful animation pipeline of its own. Through Blue Sky Studios (which it owns), it's enjoyed animated hits such as the Ice Age movies, Rio, Horton Hears A Who and more. And it's already got Rio 2 and the fabulous-looking Epic deep in production. Ice Age 5 is a cert, surely, too.
The Fox and DreamWorks Animation deal kicks off the with the excellent-looking The Croods, a film we're really looking forward to (not least because its roots are in Aardman). And it now looks as if Fox will be releasing up to four major animated movies a year. That should keep it busy...
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