Soon Part of a Conglomerate??

It looks like Jeffrey K. is going to get where he wants to be.

Comcast, the cable giant and owner of NBCUniversal, is talking to DreamWorks Animation about an acquisition for “more $3 billion,” the Wall Street Journal reports tonight citing “people familiar with the matter.”

Comcast LogoIf that’s true, then DWA shares could soar on Wednesday: The company has a market value of $2.34 billion based on Tuesday’s closing stock price of $27.12. The matter is likely to come up Wednesday morning when Comcast talks to analysts after it releases its Q1 earnings report. ...

The cable company effectively would tear a page from Bob Iger’s playbook at Disney: He has succeeded by picking up companies including Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm that develop popular franchises. Disney then markets and repurposes them worldwide through its theme parks, television networks and consumer products operations.In this case, DWA offers franchises including Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek and Madagascar that Comcast could deploy in its own parks and networks. ...

Various executives have told me that Mr. Katzenberg has been working on a merger for a bunch of years. Several times, merger talks have broken into the public prints (pixels?) only to end up unconsummated.

Comcast already has a nice little animation company called Illumination Entertainment. If the purchase of DreamWorks Animation comes to pass, it will have two*.

* Not counting Universal Cartoon Studios, now semi-languishing but a division of Universal that has been around since the early 1990s.