DreamWorks cuts back to two films a year, delays How To Train Your Dragon 3

January 23rd 2015, 9:27pm

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

There has been some recent and somewhat drastic changes going on over at DreamWorks Animation. They just recently planned to cut 500 jobs across all locations and divisions of the studio not to mention also scale back its releases from three films to two films a year. Being an advocate of quality over quantity, I don’t see the harm there, but it’s sad about the jobs that are being lost. So they will be giving us an original project and one sequel for 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Back in September of last year we told you that HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 had been pushed to 2017. Well now it’s been delayed again by over a year. Here’s the studio line up:

March 18, 2016 – KUNG FU PANDA 3
November 4, 2016 – TROLLS
January 13, 2017 – BOSS BABY (was previously March 2016)
December 22, 2017 – THE CROODS 2
February 16, 2018 – LARRIKINS
June 29, 2018 – HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 (was previously June 2017)

Beginning with TROLLS, all DreamWorks Animation budgets will come down to $120 million. That is still a lot of money but consider MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN as well as HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 each cost $145 million, and the latest DWA film, PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR cost $132 million. Speaking of Peabody, it’s one of the animated movies that studio released that underperformed. The interesting part of that is that the film was described by one marketing consultant as “too clever” for its intended audience – and, according to Deadline, mothers at test screenings apparently complained that the film was "too sophisticated" (do you have a twitch now too?). The film ended up earning a disappointing $111.5 million at the US box office, and $161.4 million worldwide.

So their strategy here is to save money by cutting jobs, lowering budgets and releasing two movies a year. These better be great movies. I’m happy to see that KUNG FU PANDA 3 won’t be hurt by these changes; that franchise is great and should be given the chance to at least complete a great trilogy.

Are you ready to hold out another year for HTTYD3?