Speculating on Movies?

So Paramount have sold their Dreamworks Library for $900 million: this doesn't look big news - just another Old Media company hitting the wall in the struggle to battle against technology - until you look at whose buying:

Paramount Pictures on Friday said it had agreed to sell its DreamWorks film library to financier George Soros' investment fund and Dune Capital Management.

Quite what quantitative macro-economic currency speculator Soros wants with Speilberg's film production company I do not know, but something is up.

Comments

[Edie]

Quite telling.

[Edie]

Actually, Daniel, what do you think is really going on here? Is it part of the larger move toward integrating television/Hollywood (controlled and approved media) with the Internet as a means of dominating it? This may actually be a step in the large (and last-ditch) effort at commercializing the online network, however conscious or otherwise the acquisition may be in this direction. "Control the Net," as the Pentagon has emphasized on behalf of the interests it represents. We would also do well to remember that Speilberg recently released 'Munich,' which, for all its faults, was a scathing criticism of Israel's militarism and by extension the US, and that Speilberg declared himself a socialist. We shall see. I'm interested in your take on this development.

[Daniel M. Harrison]

Edie,

Usually I might say yes, but in this case, I think it's obscure: Soros hardly has a mainstream media agenda - he was, after all, one of the key proponents of a Kerry presidency last election, and he has little ties with commercial media.

Soros is rather a speculator - I would think he sees more valule in the movies if he sells them off separately than if he was to sell them as a block, in which case his $900 million translates into, say fifteen parts of $100 million. It's about cataloging, is my guess.