Scholastic will be the primary publishing licensee for five future animated feature films released by DreamWorks SKG, under a strategic alliance announced December 11. The deal includes all children's formats, from novelizations and coloring/activity books to picture books and storybooks, and involves English-language rights in most territories worldwide and Spanish-language rights in North and Latin America. The books will be published under the DreamWorks imprint.
"DreamWorks has developed some very imaginative, kid-friendly, fresh properties," said Ellie Berger, v-p and deputy publisher at Scholastic. "We felt they were perfect for us in all of our channels." The first titles under the agreement will be tied to the spring 2004 sequel Shrek 2, the follow-up to the 2001 Academy Award—winning film Shrek (based on the book by William Steig), which generated more than $265 million in U.S. box office receipts. Other films in the deal were not announced; DreamWorks' previous animated movies include The Prince of Egypt and Chicken Run.
Penguin Putnam was the original master publishing licensee for the DreamWorks imprint; it sold 500,000 copies of four Shrek tie-in titles within two months of the film's release. Scholastic expects its program for Shrek 2 to be more extensive than that for the original film, according to Berger.
