DreamWorks Acquired Classic Media, Will Reboot Our Childhoods

Earlier this week, DreamWorks Animation spent a ton of money to make two tons of money, as the company purchased Classic Media and all of the popular animated titles that come with it. For $155 million, DreamWorks is now in the driver’s seat for rebooting some of the most popular cartoons of past generations. Ain’t none of this Spongebob Liberalpants baloney that your kids are being brainwashed with today. No sir.

According to Moviefone, this deal is basically a cash cow that will probably net DreamWorks billions as the company re-introduces franchise after franchise. But there’s just one pain-in-the-ass obstacle standing in the way.

The plan for the re-christened DreamWorks Classic is to develop new adventures for this library of characters on the big screen.

However, it’s not going to be without some complications: Classic Media doesn’t own all of its characters outright so it’s going to take a couple of years to get rights issues sorted out (in this regard, it’s very similar to Disney’s acquisition of Marvel Comics). Either way, DreamWorks has already gotten started on a “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” movie, set for November 2013.

The most notable Classic Media titles that DreamWorks won’t benefit from for quite some time are The Lone Ranger (currently a Jerry Bruckheimer Films project) and Where’s Waldo? (being produced by MGM), as those are currently being produced by other studios.

Classic Media’s catalog doesn’t feature too many titles that haven’t received the feature film treatment – notably Archie and Magnus: Robot Fighter – as plenty of other titles have already come and gone, including Casper, Dick Tracy, Dudley Do-Right, Fat Albert, Felix the Cat, George of the Jungle, Gumby, He-Man, Lassie, Mr. Magoo, Richie Rich, Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Underdog.

If anything, this is absolutely fantastic news for Brendan Fraser.

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