The premier international content market, MIPCOM, has announced that entertainment executive and CEO of DreamWorks Animation, Jeffrey Katzenberg, has been named MIPCOM 2013 Personality of the Year.
Organised by Reed MIDEM, MIPCOM will take place in Cannes, France from 7 to 10 October.
Katzenberg will accept the award on Wednesday 9 October during a gala dinner for industry executives at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. The same day, he will address the MIPCOM audience in the Palais des Festival’s Grand Auditorium and share his unique perspectives on the television business as part of MIPCOM’s Media Mastermind series of presentations.
In 1994, along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, Katzenberg co-founded DreamWorks SKG, which produced celebrated films including three Best Picture Academy Award winners – American Beauty, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind. Since 2004, DreamWorks Animation has been a publicly-traded company.
Under Katzenberg’s leadership, it has become the largest animation studio in the world, releasing 27 animated feature films to date and earning nine Academy Award nominations and two wins for Best Animated Feature. Releases include the Shrek, Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon, and Kung Fu Panda film franchises, among many other worldwide hits. Prior to co-founding DreamWorks, Katzenberg served as chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, as well as president of Paramount Studios.
This honour is particularly relevant this year as DreamWorks Animation recently announced a major expansion into television production and distribution. The studio is committed to producing hundreds of hours of original animated series based on DreamWorks Animation’s beloved films as well as the Classic Media library, which DreamWorks acquired in 2012. Classic Media founders – former Marvel Entertainment CEO Eric Ellenbogen and former Broadway Video executive John Engelman – now lead DreamWorks Animation’s international television business.
In May 2013, DreamWorks Animation also acquired AwesomenessTV, one of the most subscribed-to multi-channel networks on YouTube. Launched in 2012 by its CEO Brian Robbins, AwesomenessTV has already signed up over 74,000 channels, aggregating over 21 million subscribers and over 1.2 billion video views. Robbins will be delivering a keynote address on Sunday 6 October at MIPJunior, the world’s showcase for kids’ programming which runs in Cannes from 5 to 6 October, ahead of MIPCOM.
Says Reed MIDEM CEO Paul Zilk: “Jeffrey Katzenberg’s outstanding impact on the entertainment industry is internationally recognised, as he has brought exceptional films, both live-action and animation, to millions of people around the world. The acquisitions of Classic Media and AwesomenessTV, the recent groundbreaking deals with companies including Netflix and Super RTL, and DreamWork Animation’s continuing expansion into the television world, all demonstrate his clear vision of the future of entertainment.
“We are honoured to welcome Jeffrey Katzenberg to Cannes as the MIPCOM 2013 Personality of the Year.’
For more information about MIPCOM go to www.mipcom.com.
