Japan's SoftBank Corp is in talks to acquire DreamWorks Animation SKG , a person with knowledge of the situation said. An acquisition of DreamWorks by SoftBank would make the Hollywood studio that created Shrek part of a Japanese communications and media company that, under founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son, has shown a willingness to take big bets on combining seemingly unrelated businesses.
The acquisition talks were first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, which quoted an unidentified source with knowledge of the deal as saying an acquisition would value DreamWorks at $3.4 billion. The entertainment trade publication said SoftBank had offered $32 per share for DreamWorks. The stock closed at $22.36 on Friday.
Last week, SoftBank booked a $4.6 billion gain on the share listing of Alibaba Group in New York. SoftBank retains a 32 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce company, making it Alibaba's biggest shareholder. SoftBank has significant stakes in other large listed entities, including US mobile carrier Sprint, internet portal Yahoo Japan and online games maker GungHo Online Entertainment.
A SoftBank spokesman said the company had no comment on the reported talks with DreamWorks. A representative of DreamWorks could not be immediately reached for comment. DreamWorks, based in Glendale, California, has seen its share price has drop 37% this year after two consecutive quarterly losses, a string of weak-performing releases such as How To Train Your Dragon 2 and investor concern about the production costs of its movies.
In July, DreamWorks said the US Securities and Exchange Commision was investigating a write down it took at the end of 2013 on the animated flop Turbo. Dreamworks Animation was spun off from DreamWorks Studios in 2004 as a separate listed company. The earlier Dreamworks studio had been founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who moved with the spin-off and remains chief executive of the animation company.
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