One late December afternoon, in an office overrun by plastic figurines of sharp-talking animation characters, Jeffrey Katzenberg takes a seat next to an inflatable Kung Fu Panda punching bag and begins talking about an ailment that might best be described as “opening-weekend box office anxiety.”
With the premiere of Kung Fu Panda 3 only weeks away, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation describes the chronic condition that affects not just himself but most Hollywood studio executives. “Opening movies is as much an art as it is a science,” Katzenberg tells me. Through rimless glasses, his dark eyes grow intense within the close-shaved head, and for a moment the 65-year-old mogul takes on the aspect of a Buddhist sage. “I think probably for any and all of us in the movie business, opening weekend is the most anxious, because that’s finally when your customer votes. It can be incredibly rewarding and it can be brutal. And I have experienced both sides of the spectrum and everywhere in between.”
Box office anxiety first struck Katzenberg as a young man, soon after he came from New York to Los Angeles in the early ’70s, and it hasn’t subsided despite a long record of blockbusters stretching from Saturday Night Fever to Terms of Endearment to The Lion King to Toy Story to Shrek to Madagascar. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years and it doesn’t change,” he says. “As a 20-something–year-old kid who was more gofer than principal but still highly invested in what were doing, it mattered as much then as it does today. And here, our fortunes very much ride up and down on our successes and failures.”
DreamWorks turned 21 last year. The company was founded in 1994 as one of the three pillars of DreamWorks SKG—a partnership between Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen encompassing live-action film, animation and music. At the time, their venture was heralded as the first brick-and-mortar studio to be built in Hollywood in 70 years. In the 2000s, the struggling music and live-action divisions were sold off. Only animation remained, and from the DreamWorks Animation campus in Glendale, California, Katzenberg has nurtured a string of movies strong enough to fill the aisles of toy stores, wend their way into McDonald’s Happy Meals and spawn numerous sequels.
Despite his studio’s relative youth, Katzenberg is confident that DreamWorks Animation already has ascended to a state of “brandhood.” I ask him how he can tell. “Some of it is data driven,” he says, “and some of it is seat-of-the-pants instinct. It’s something that the audience gives you and you don’t get to declare it for yourself. They associate you with a set of values and attributes.”
With wiseacre heroes voiced by the likes of Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers and Jack Black, Katzenberg sees major differences between the DreamWorks brand and that of the Walt Disney Company, where he headed up film production during the ’80s and early ’90s. “Disney is driven first and foremost by the heart and by emotions and is very much for the child in all of us,” he says. “And I think DreamWorks is driven first and foremost by comedy and laughter—and the adult that exists in every child.”
Certainly DreamWorks’ corporate culture diverges sharply from the one overseen by his old boss, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Katzenberg had already developed a reputation as a turnaround artist at Paramount during the late ’70s when in 1984 he arrived at Disney, then at the bottom of the box office. He began reviving the studio’s profits through live-action films such as Good Morning, Vietnam and Three Men and A Baby, hit TV series such as Home Improvement and Golden Girls, and, most crucially, animation smashes such as Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. After Disney president Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter crash, Eisner nonetheless declined to promote Katzenberg to the No. 2 spot.
Following their well-publicized rift and Katzenberg’s departure, Eisner hired superagent Michael Ovitz as Disney president, setting in motion a 14-month debacle that led to brutal press and eventually a severance package for Ovitz estimated at $138 million. Roy Disney led an ultimately successful shareholder revolt, declaring that under Eisner, the enterprise his uncle Walt created had become a “soulless, rapacious” company.
When asked about the split, Katzenberg retains his diplomacy: “Many of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my career have been either from my own mistakes or by observing mistakes made by the people around me,” he says. “Let’s just say there were many lessons learned during those last few months at Disney.”
It was far from the first time such accusations had been leveled at a Hollywood studio. Starting in the early days of Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, the film industry has had a reputation for being ruthless. In fact, on Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 Best Companies to work for, only one Hollywood entertainment company has made the cut: DreamWorks appeared on the roster five years in a row—twice in the top 10.
And it’s easy to see why: There’s always a free lunch for DreamWorks employees, not to mention free kickboxing classes and yoga. Katzenberg can be seen chatting with workers in their cubicles. He’s easier to run across than many entertainment CEOs, since his smallish office is situated near the center of the workspace instead of being tucked away into a corner. “Physically, this campus is designed to be a talent trap.” Katzenberg says. “If we can draw you onto this campus as an artist or an engineer, it’s unlikely you’re leaving.”
In this, DreamWorks has much in common with the tech sector—although it might be more accurate to say that the tech center has much in common with DreamWorks. “We’ve been around 21 years, right?” Katzenberg continues. “All of Silicon Valley—Google, Facebook, YouTube—none of them has been around for 21 years. Pick any of those places, and the things they’ve created for their culture we’ve been doing here for a very, very long time.”
In a digital media climate that has been challenging for traditional entertainment studios, DreamWorks has chosen to extend its reach in a pact with a major disruptor. Such supporting characters as Puss in Boots from Shrek 2 and Madagascar’s King Julien the lemur have become stars on Netflix. Those series (The Adventures of Puss in Boots and All Hail King Julien) are part of the 300 hours of original programming that DreamWorks is producing for the streaming service. “They are just so smart, creative and collaborative,” Katzenberg says of his Netflix partners. “Even when we disagree it’s a pleasure.”
Through the acquisition of Classic Media, Katzenberg plans to produce new adventures for entertainment icons of childhoods past. “There are an extraordinary number of which I can just say the title out loud and generationally everybody knows them,” Katzenberg says, the pace of his words accelerating with his enthusiasm. “So—Casper the Friendly Ghost, Where’s Waldo, George of the Jungle, Mr. Magoo. Now I can keep going endlessly, and that’s the beauty of it. Because all of these are incredibly valuable and the opportunity to reinvent them for the 21st century and make them relevant and connective for today—that is huge! That is the genius of what they’ve done with Marvel superheroes—and that’s what I believe Classic Media can do for us.”
Classic Media also has brought to the DreamWorks fold a certain loveable collie whose live-action TV series spanned the 1950s to the 1970s. “Lassie, she is the most beloved, recognized pet in the world,” Katzenberg says. “Believe me, she’s as well known in China as she is in Connecticut.”
One day, when audiences from Greenwich to Shanghai see the DreamWorks reincarnation of Lassie, perhaps instead of just barking, she might speak in the cadence of, say, Jennifer Lawrence or Sandra Bullock. Katzenberg began crowding his animated films with the voices of movie and TV stars in his earliest days at Disney.
“Everybody always used to say, ‘You cast stars in your movie because you wanted their celebrity,’” he says. “No, we cast stars in our movie because we wanted the most talented people. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen were two of our biggest stars at Disney when they did Toy Story. [Director] John Lasseter wanted the best, and to be able to have access to that talent for his movie . . . I mean, Steven Spielberg wants Tom Hanks in every movie he ever makes.”
In Katzenberg’s experience, even stars of Hanks’ and Allen’s caliber usually don’t take too much cajoling to sign on to an animated film. “Honestly,” he says, “I’ve probably directly been involved in somewhere between 40 and 50 animated movies in my career, which is a lot, right?” he asks, rhetorically. “And I can tell you there’s less than a handful of times that an actor has declined to do an animated movie. Which is the opposite of live-action movies. I can tell you there’s less than a handful of times that our first choice to be cast in a live-action movie actually said yes to us.”
And yet, there are two heavy hitters whose answer has consistently been “no” to Katzenberg’s overtures to make them the voice of the next great DreamWorks marsupial, or insect, or deep-sea predator or whatever personality-filled character he may have dangled before them. “I never got Jack Nicholson and I never got Clint Eastwood.” Katzenberg says, with a tinge of wistfulness. “I’ve always dreamed of both of them. They have unbelievable voices—distinctive, powerful, beautiful! Their voices are a symphony. Literally, those are the two that I have always lusted for.” He laughs, maybe because this tale of unrequited love is all starting to sound a little mushy.
Kung Fu Panda 3, for its part, will be dependably studded with major stars. In addition to the return of Jack Black in the lead as Po, Angelina Jolie is reprising her role as Tigress, Seth Rogen as Mantis—and Bryant Cranston is playing Po’s long-lost father, Li.
As the premiere for Kung Fu Panda 3 approaches, you might think Katzenberg is anticipating a milder bout of opening-weekend anxiety. The project, after all, is not a whole new animal for the audience but the latest installment of a proven box office performer, dependably studded with stars. But you would be wrong. “Absolutely not, because the expectations are always greater,” Katzenberg says, smiling confidently at all the stress to come. “In this game there is no free pass.”