Comcast is buying DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion

Shrek and Kung Fu Panda will soon belong to Comcast. The entertainment behemoth, which also owns NBCUniversal but couldn't quite close the deal on Time Warner Cable, is paying $3.8 billion in cash for the deal, according to Variety

If you include debt, Comcast will shell out $4.1 billion for struggling studio, which spun off from DreamWorks in 2004. To put things in perspective, that's actually more than what Disney paid for Lucasfilm (roughly $4.06 billion, half in cash and half in stock) and slightly less than the $4.24 billion in cash and stock that Disney paid for Marvel. And Disney got Star Wars and all those Avengers films out of those deals! 

What will Comcast get? The New York Times says it'll now have more children's entertainment offerings (and toy sales resulting from those offerings) as well as things to fill its Universal Studios theme parks with. Comcast already has Illumination, which gave us Despicable Me and those minions. Adding DreamWorks Animation's franchises to that could pose a real threat to Disney's stranglehold on the animated film market. Especially since DWA's Trolls is coming out in November, and that movie is sure to be … something.

It also means Comcast will own DreamWorks Classics, which owns Casper and Lassie and, oh yeah, Voltron. So before you scoff at Comcast for paying so much for Shrek, remember that it's also getting the Defenders of the Universe. And Trolls.

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