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[Uninvited]

[SPEC] 1-18-08 trailer on On The Lot?

[Nitsujest]

ok well i wouldn't think so you know the movie is by paramont and not dreamworks

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[zeebo]

i think paramount and dreamworks is teamed up

[Cole]

yea I'm almost positive I heard somewhere that they merged companies.

[Nitsujest]

[elvis cocho]

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[Nitsujest]

[dtweedokay]

if it means anything, I'm pretty sure michael bay was a guest judge on one of the episodes of On The Lot

[Nitsujest]

[dtweedokay]

[Almijisti]

Actually, the show's not that bad. If only they got rid of Carrie Fisher--she's totally inane and contributes nothing to the show; and also tightened up things and eliminated a lot of the useless chit-chat. Some of the vids they come up with are pretty good (most are crapola, but that's the point I guess). It would be very interesting if they did a tie-in with the Cloverfield movie.

As for the rest, Paramount Pictures bought Dreamworks film division back in February of 2002. See, e.g., this BBC article from then. The only thing that Dreamworks does independently is their animation (which is pretty much just the Shrek franchise these days that Paramount distributes, but does not own). All of it is owned by Viacom. FWIW, there have been rumours that Viacom/Paramount is planning on cutting loose Dreamworks since it hasn't been a happy marriage so far: here's a link to that news. This news could be significant for this film since a breakup would almost certainly lead to Abrams defection to the DreamWorks camp, meaning that the Cloverfield movie could be delayed. There have long been serious questions about getting this film out by January 18, 2008 under any circumstances.

Like all the Paramount projects that made at Dreamworks's studios, Transformers had both Paramount's mountain opening and Dreamworks fishing thing.

With the merger (in reality, it was a straightforward acquisition), Paramount also took control over all of the projects that Dreamworks had (which includes all the thousands of scripts they bought and other ideas). I've tried in vain for some time to figure out if there were any ideas/projects that Dreamworks might have had at that time that could be related to the film. It's very difficult to pry this sort of information from studios, so no luck there.

[1-18-08.livejournal.com]

Paramount does own Dreamworks, but not all Paramount films are Dreamworks films. If this was a Dreamworks film, it probably would have said so in the teaser.

[SisBear]

Transformers is a Dreamworks and Paramount film, but I haven't seen anything so far that links Dreamworks to Cloverfield. I agree that if it were a Dreamworks film, then it probably would have said that or listed Steven Spielberg as a producer at the end of the teaser/trailer. Wikipedia says that Dreamworks is a subsidiary of Paramount/Viacom, so FWIW.

Most of the guest judges on On the Lot have had some kind of affiliation with Dreamworks/Steven Spielberg. It wasn't coincidence that Michael Bay was a guest judge right around the time that Transformers came out. It would be cool if they showed something related to Cloverfield in the On the Lot finale. I've been watching the show every week! I just wish Zach had made it to the top 3! He was my favorite director, although his last two shorts were not as original or as well done as his others.