You want surreal? Read Laura

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You want surreal? Read Laura Holson's New York Times story about the Universal-buying-DreamWorks negotiations that have fallen apart. Because two recent DreamWorks films -- The Island and Just Like Heaven -- respectively flopped and underperformed, NBC Universal executives involved in negotations to purchase the live-action filmmaking side of DreamWorks (along with the company's 60-film library) "lowered their projection of the rate of return for DreamWorks" and therfore lowered their offer from $1.5 billion to $1.4 billion. This still would have handed about $900 million to DreamWorks' partners and investors (David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, Paul Allen and...?). But because of the $100 million downgrade, Geffen, who was repping DreamWorks in the negotiations, said "forget it" and the deal has gone south. This what living in a fantasy membrane of sloth and corruption comes to...here is a portrait of men and women who are so far off the ground and so swaddled in mink and diamonds they've forgotten what it means to stand on the ground, smell the air and look reality in the eye. The DreamWorks library has a solid ascertainable value. The future-tense ability of the DreamWorks production team (including director Steven Spielberg) to bring in tens of millions more in revenue from the movies they might make is a very hazy proposition. The Spielberg brand is worth plenty with average-Joe audiences, but if you ask me the rest of the team isn't worth a whole lot. 90% of the perceived value of a company's future output is always about smoke and mirrors and hot air. My advice is for someone to purchase the library and let the DreamWorks apparatus scatter in the winds...break the company into a thousand pieces and let the life process recoagulate somewhere else. Are the DreamWorkers supposed to be some kind of golden-goose crew? Says who? Based on what? Take the needle out of your arm.

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