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Jeffrey Katzenberg Almost Bought Us More 'Breaking Bad'

This article is more than 10 years old.

How much would you pay for more Breaking Bad episodes? For DreamWorks Animation chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, the price was $75 million. According to Deadline Hollywood, he told the crowd at Mipcom (an international marketplace for TV and online entertainment) that he offered the Breaking Bad producers the money if they would create the shows as 30 six-minute snippets that could be sold on VOD platforms.

Creator Vince Gilligan obviously did not take Katzenberg up on the offer. But it shows how much faith the media mogul is putting in online content as the next big money pot for the entertainment industry. Roughly 10 million people tuned in to the Breaking Bad finale. If even a fraction of that audience, say 2 million people bought the mini episodes at $1 a piece that would be $30 from each viewer or $60 million. The finale earned an estimated $8 million from ads.

Although Katzenberg's DreamWorks is best known for big animated films like Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon, the company is expanding into new forms of content. DreamWorks recently bought AwesomenessTV for $33 million. The teen skewing YouTube channel features scripted and reality programs in 10 minute bites. The shows are designed to keep viewers clicking for that next episode. The channel has more than 900,000 subscribers.

Katzenberg's Mipcom comments show how seriously he is taking the evolution of entertainment. While plenty of big names have dove into the online world (see Funny or Die and shows like Burning Love on Yahoo), finding ways to make online content profitable is still a challenge. If Katzenberg can find a way to make it work, he'll be an industry hero. Katzenberg received the Personality of the Year award at the annual convention.

Follow me on Twitter at DorothyatForbes.