DreamWorks Studios (officially DreamWorks II Holding Co., LLC) also known as DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks Pictures, or simply DreamWorks, is an American film production company which produces and develops films, television programming, and video games. It was also a former film distributor for its own and third-party films. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses of more than $100 million each. Currently, DreamWorks' films are marketed and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures under its Touchstone Pictures banner, with their contract set to expire in 2016.
DreamWorks began in 1994 as an attempt by media moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (together, SKG) to create a new Hollywood studio of which they owned 72%. Currently, DreamWorks operates out of offices at Universal Studios. In December 2005, the founders agreed to sell the studio to Viacom, parent of Paramount Pictures. The sale was completed in February 2006. In 2008, DreamWorks announced its intention to end its partnership with Paramount and signed a $1.5 billion deal to produce films with India's Reliance ADA Group. Reliance provided $325M of equity to fund recreating DreamWorks SKG into DreamWorks Studios, an independent entity. Clark Hallren, former Managing Director of the Entertainment Industries group of J.P. Morgan Securities and Alan J. Levine of J.P. Morgan Entertainment Advisors led the Reliance team in restructuring the company.
DreamWorks' animation arm was spun off in 2004 into DreamWorks Animation SKG (DWA), which currently owns the DreamWorks trademarks. Spielberg's company continues to use the DreamWorks trademarks under license from DWA.
Lieutenant General Eugene Irwin (Robert Redford) is brought to a maximum security military prison to begin a ten-year sentence for his decision (in violation of a presidential order) to send U.S. troops on a mission in Burundi, resulting in the deaths of eight soldiers. Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini), the prison's commandant, is a great admirer of the general but is offended by a comment he overhears: Irwin criticizes Winter's much-prized military artifacts collection, calling it something no actual battlefield veteran would ever have.
In AD 180, Spanish-Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius leads the Roman army to a decisive victory against the Germanic tribes near Vindobona, ending a long war on the Roman frontier and winning the favor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Maximus, weary of battle, decides to retire at his Spanish farm estate at the Emperor's behest, but the Emperor tells him that his son and heir to the throne, Commodus, is unfit to rule and thus appoints him as regent to help save Rome from corruption. Before he makes his decision, Commodus is confronted by his father who tells him that he will not be emperor. Burdened by grief and believing he was never valued by his father, Commodus kills him.
Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) is living in Vermont with her husband, renowned scientist Dr. Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford). One year previously, Claire had been involved in a serious car accident that leaves gaps in her memory. Combined with her daughter Caitlin's (Katharine Towne) departure for college, this leaves Claire profoundly affected.
Career criminal Ray (Woody Allen) and his cronies want to lease an old restaurant so they can tunnel from the basement of the restaurant to a nearby bank. Ray's wife Frenchy (Tracey Ullman) covers what they are doing by selling cookies from the restaurant. The bank robbery scheme is a miserable failure, but after they franchise the business, selling cookies makes them millionaires.
Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy run a failing chicken farm in Yorkshire; the chickens are caged in the style of a prison camp with a high fence and barbed wire, with two dogs that patrol the grounds. As their chickens are producing fewer eggs, Mrs. Tweedy comes up with the idea of converting their product from eggs to chicken pies, and orders a large automatic pie maker.
Gaylord "Greg" Focker (Ben Stiller) is a nurse living in Chicago, who intends to propose to his girlfriend Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo), a schoolteacher. His plan is disrupted when Pam's sister Debbie becomes engaged and he finds out that Debbie's fiance, Dr. Robert "Bob" Banks had asked Pam's father for permission before proposing. Greg and Pam travel to Pam's parents' house in Oyster Bay, Long Island to attend the wedding. Greg hopes to propose to Pam in front of her family after receiving her father's permission, but this plan is put on hold when the airline loses his luggage, including the engagement ring.
In 1973, William Miller is a 15-year-old boy aspiring to be a rock journalist. His mother, Elaine, wants him to become a lawyer. Shunned by his classmates, he writes for underground papers in San Diego, sharing the love of rock music instilled in him through a gift of albums left behind on the day his sister Anita left home.
In Spain 1519, two con artists, Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh), win a map to the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado, in a rigged gambling match. After their con is discovered, the two evade capture while being chased by a bull and hide in barrels, which are shortly loaded onto one of the ships to be led by Hernán Cortés (Jim Cummings) to the New World. During the trip, they are caught as stowaways and imprisoned, but manage to break free and take a rowboat with the help of Cortés' horse, Altivo (Frank Welker).
In 1995, Chuck Noland is a time-obsessed systems engineer, who travels worldwide resolving productivity problems at FedEx depots. He is in a long-term relationship with Kelly Frears, with whom he lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Although the couple wants to get married, Chuck's busy schedule interferes with their relationship. A Christmas with relatives is interrupted when Chuck is summoned to resolve a problem in Malaysia. While flying through a violent storm, his plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Chuck escapes the sinking plane and is saved by an inflatable life-raft but loses the raft's emergency locator transmitter. He clings to the life-raft, loses consciousness, and floats all night before being washed up on an island. After he awakens, he explores the island and soon discovers that it is uninhabited.
Russ Richards (John Travolta), the weatherman for a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania television station, is revered as a local celebrity by his viewers, and fame affords him such perks as a reserved parking spot and his own booth at Denny's, where an omelet bears his name. His eternally optimistic demeanor conceals the fact his snowmobile dealership is on the verge of bankruptcy due to an unusually warm winter.
Colm (Barry McEvoy) takes a job as a barber in a Belfast psychiatric hospital. He meets the staff and is warned against talking about poetry with George, a fellow barber (Brían F. O'Byrne). when he brings it up, George subjects him to his own poor work. The pair chat anyway. Later they meet an orderly escorting a new patient, whom he refers to as "The Scalper" (Billy Connolly), described as the only seller of hair pieces in all of Northern Ireland until he had a nervous breakdown and scalped some of his own customers. Colm and George decide to meet with the Scalper to gain his list of customers; they intend to take over his former hairpiece monopoly. The Scalper agrees to give them the list.
Lester Burnham is a middle-aged magazine writer who despises his job. His wife, Carolyn, is an ambitious real estate broker; their sixteen-year-old daughter, Jane, abhors her parents and has low self-esteem. The Burnhams' new neighbors are retired United States Marine Corps Colonel Frank Fitts and his introverted wife, Barbara. Their teenage son, Ricky, obsessively films his surroundings with a camcorder, collecting hundreds of recordings on video tapes in his bedroom. He also secretly deals marijuana, using a job as a part-time bar caterer to help keep it secret from his father. Having been previously forced into a military academy and a psychiatric hospital, Ricky is subjected by Col. Fitts to a strict disciplinarian lifestyle. Jim Olmeyer and Jim Berkley, a gay couple who live nearby, welcome the family to the neighborhood; Col. Fitts later reveals his homophobia when angrily discussing the incident with Ricky.
The film follows the cast of a once-popular television space-drama series called Galaxy Quest. The fictional series starred Jason Nesmith (Allen) as the commander of a spaceship called the NSEA Protector, Alexander Dane (Rickman) as the ship's alien science officer, Fred Kwan (Shalhoub) as the chief engineer, Gwen DeMarco (Weaver) as the computer officer and Tommy Webber (Mitchell) as a precocious child pilot. Guy Fleegman (Rockwell) played an unnamed security officer, who was quickly killed off in his only appearance on the show.
Claire Cooper (Benning) is a suburban housewife and mother who illustrates children's stories and is married to an airline pilot (Aidan Quinn). Her world unravels when her daughter is kidnapped and brutally murdered.