Animation giant is going public / Bay Area's DreamWorks made 'Shrek 2' (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/22/MNGLL7QGK836.DTL) Shrek conquered Nemo at the box office and now plans to take on Wall Street.

Entertainment studio DreamWorks SKG, trying to capitalize on the success of its Bay Area-produced blockbuster "Shrek 2,'' filed plans Wednesday to raise $650 million by taking its animation divisions public.

The resulting DreamWorks Animation Inc., to be headed by Hollywood luminary Jeffrey Katzenberg, could produce the movie industry's biggest initial public offering since rival Pixar Animation Studios Inc. had its IPO in November 1995, analysts said.

A little competition never hurt anyone... except that now Disney is Pixar-less :(

I wonder if Eisner is kicking himself in the groin -hard- for not keeping the little company that CAN.

Pixar is not likely to go anywhere but back to DIS. And, it's still there for the next two films.

I'd read in one of the news articles about the Pixar-Disney split that there is a certain amount of lead time required for a movie company to issue contracts for licensed products and that in the spring of 2004 Pixar was facing that deadline for the movie that comes out after "Cars" ("Cars" is the last film under the current Disney-Pixar contract). So, is Pixar biding time, risking licensing agreements and future income stream, to see whether Disney comes to its senses and re-signs up with Pixar or not? If Pixar seems to be waiting for Michael Eisner to not be CEO any more, or waiting for a SaveDisney.com alternative slate of officers to be nominated and voted on at the 2005 Disney Annual Shareholders meeting, at the very least Pixar's got a long wait on its hands, and at the max hell hasn't frozen over yet....