DreamWorks

It can't be easy to create a movie in which the hero is seen by some as the villain.

Yet that is the difficult task for the production team behind "The Fifth Estate," a movie whose filming has already begun.

This DreamWorks opus traces the rises, falls, and drips of pathos surrounding Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks enterprise.

The Associated Press reveals that Assange will be played by Benedict Cumberbatch, one of the many who have impersonated Sherlock Holmes on film.

Cumberbatch is quite posh, so he should quite easily be able to express that touch of … Read more

TUCSON, Ariz.--It may seem like creating a top-animated movie has become a simpler process with the advent of computer graphics. Yet in a talk here at Techonomy 2011, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg shared details that show just how tedious the work remains--even today.

"An expert animator can do about three seconds of animation in a week," said Katzenberg, who was interviewed today by moderator David Kirkpatrick.

Even more challenging is that the designers are working largely in the dark, unable for hours to see, for instance, how exactly a character's leg moves during a dance scene. … Read more

Sprint has signed a $20 billion dollar deal for 30.5 million new iPhones, and Adobe releases Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 with accelerated 3D graphics support, and check out CNET.com's live coverage of Apple's announcement of the next iPhone(s).

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Is Netflix desperate to generate positive news?

Sure seems that way. Someone gave The New York Times a heads up on a licensing deal that Netflix signed with DreamWorks Animation, the home of such films as "Shrek" and "How to Train Your Dragon," and the paper wrote a breathless story about the agreement.

But the details of the pact make it clear the partnership doesn't warrant the Times' goose-pimply reaction.

The paper made much of how DreamWorks is walking away from a licensing deal with HBO, the dominant pay TV service. This is supposed to … Read more

Netflix is close to reaching an agreement to license content from DreamWorks Animation and a deal could get done as soon as this week, according to a published report.

The news comes with Netflix due to report earnings after the close of trading today and with scores of Netflix customers deciding whether the company's streaming library is worth an upcoming fee increase.

Bloomberg is reporting that Netflix and DreamWorks Animation, the maker of such films as "Shrek," "Madagascar," and "Kung Fu Panda" are still in talks but that it appears Netflix will take … Read more

Zynga is beefing up its board of directors by announcing today that it has added Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO and co-founder of DreamWorks Animation.

Katzenberg, who created the animation studio along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, marks the sixth board member of the privately held social-games company, which earned a jaw-dropping profit of $400 million on $850 million in revenues last year.

Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus made the announcement in a blog post today on the company's Web site: "I knew he'd be a great fit for the board after he suggested that the … Read more

Last week, I attended a press event in Los Angeles hosted by Hewlett-Packard's workstation business unit. Hewlett-Packard was preparing for this week's announcement of three new Z-series workstation models: the Z400, Z600, and Z800.

HP briefed the reporters and analysts with all the key details of the products (the speeds and feeds, as we say), took us to visit a couple of HP's key customers in the area, and hosted presentations by software partners and more customers.

The workstations are very nice, especially the Z600 and Z800: high-quality dual-processor systems based on Intel's newest Xeon 5500… Read more

Intel and DreamWorks Animation on Tuesday announced a strategic alliance designed to power up the movie studio's 3D authoring tools.

Faced with increasing demand for 3D animated feature films, DreamWorks will receive access to Intel's latest and future high-performance chips, including those with multiple processing cores. Intel's software engineers will also work with DreamWorks to tweak the studio's applications to run on an Intel-based computing infrastructure.

"Technology plays a significant role in enabling our artists to tell great stories. By utilizing Intel's industry-leading computing products, we will create a new and innovative way for … Read more

At its Connecting the World event in Berlin, Germany, HP unveiled the first DreamColor monitor from its partnership with DreamWorks. The DreamColor LP2480xz is a 24-inch LCD that will set you or your design shop back $3,500. For the money, you get 30-bit color for over 1 billion color possibilities (standard LCDs are 24-bit for 16.7 million color options). HP says you will see deeper reds, blues, and greens when standing next to a run-of-the-mill consumer LCD, while blacks will appear four times darker and whites are adjustable.

The DreamColor LP2480xz features a 1920x1200 native resolution, LED backlighting, … Read more