Netflix Swipes DreamWorks Animation From HBO

Things are looking up for Netflix. DreamWorks Animation, the folks behind the Shrek and Kung Fu Panda series, is dropping HBO and will now release its movies first via Netflix, reports the New York Times. The deal starts in 2013, and will cost Netflix a hefty $30 million per picture—but getting first crack at the all-important television window is a prestigious move for Netflix after a summer of bad news and as ever more rivals enter the online streaming business. “We are really starting to see a long-term road map of where the industry is headed,” said DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. “This is a game-changing deal.”

Netflix's rising prices and splitting of its online and DVD services into two companies battered the company this summer, causing about 1 million customers of its 25 million customers to walk away, and dropping its company value in half to $8 billion. "When a company like DreamWorks ends a long-running pay TV deal—when a new buyer in the space steps up—that’s a really interesting landscape shift," said a Netflix executive. (More HBO stories.)