He started working when he was very young, voluntarily, and ended up with 1,200,000,000 million dollars.
Jeffrey Katzenberg is known for being one of the co-founders of the famous film production company DreamWorks. The success of the company led him to amass a fortune of 1,200,000,000 million dollars, but an unusual decision made him lose a large part of his assets. In any case, his career is interesting to analyze.
He was born in New York on December 21, 1950. At just 14 years old, he participated as a volunteer in John Lindsay’s political campaign for mayor of the City. Just 4 years later he began working on television projects, while he was studying at the University of California in 1964.
Jeffrey Katzenberg DreamWorks
Who is Jeffrey Katzenberg?
His career began as an assistant to David V. Picker, the CEO of Paramount Pictures. After 10 years, he went directly to work for the company’s president, Barry Diller. He held different positions until one of his most important challenges arrived, being in charge of recreating the Star Trek movie.
In 1984 he made an important leap in his career, becoming president of The Walt Disney Company. There he oversaw the production and business processes of films such as Aladdin, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. In any case, due to conflicts with his relationship with the CEO of the company, he made the decision not to renew his contract in 1994.
At that time I had other plans. Together with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen they created DreamWorks SKG. In this new project he was in charge of the executive production and animation operations of the company’s new animated feature films. Anyway, after losing $125,000,000 for an animated film, they switched to computer-generated animation.
In 2004, DreamWorks Animation was separated from DreamWorks as a company run by Katzenberg.
How he lost half his fortune
The success of his films and the growth of DreamWorks led him to build a considerable fortune. Since its founding, and more precisely since 2000 with the help of Shrek, DreamWorks resonated throughout the world for its productions. But the changing times brought new ways of consuming entertainment and in turn forced production companies to adapt to new consumer preferences.
The advance of streaming platforms was imminent and Jeffrey Katzenberg took a risk by investing US$1,700,000,000 in an emerging company called Quibi. Two years later, this company went bankrupt after just 6 months of operation. This operation caused the businessman to lose approximately US$500,000,000. Currently, his fortune is valued at US$800,000,000 after the failure of his last investment.
Source: Ambito
I am Pierce Boyd, a driven and ambitious professional working in the news industry. I have been writing for 24 Hours Worlds for over five years, specializing in sports section coverage. During my tenure at the publication, I have built an impressive portfolio of articles that has earned me a reputation as an experienced journalist and content creator.
