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    The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks
    The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks
    The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks
    Audiobook18 hours

    The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks

    Written by Nicole LaPorte

    Narrated by Stephen Hoye

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    For sixty years, since the birth of United Artists, the studio landscape was unchanged.Then came Hollywood's Circus Maximus-created by director Steven Spielberg, billionaire David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who gave the world The Lion King-an entertainment empire called DreamWorks. Now Nicole LaPorte, who covered the company for Variety, goes behind the hype to reveal for the first time the delicious truth of what happened.

    Audiences will feel they are part of the creative calamities of moviemaking as LaPorte's fly-on-the-wall detail shows us Hollywood's bizarre rules of business. We see the clashes between the often otherworldly Spielberg's troops and Katzenberg's warriors, the debacles and disasters, but also the Oscar-winning triumphs, including Saving Private Ryan. We watch as the studio burns through billions, its rich owners get richer, and everybody else suffers. We see Geffen seducing investors like Microsoft's Paul Allen, showing his steel against CAA's Michael Ovitz, and staging fireworks during negotiations with Paramount and Disney. Here is Hollywood, up close, glamorous, and gritty.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 10, 2010
    ISBN9781400186471

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    Reviews for The Men Who Would Be King

    4.5/5

    13 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      If you have any interest in Hollywood, movies, or how movies get made you're going to love this book.The book traces the beginnings of Dreamworks from its inception to regained independence in 2009. The author does such a fantastic job of describing the players and detailing the situations and motives that you feel like you were a part of the whole thing. The chapters in which she tells about specific movies really moves the book along and keeps you wrapped up in what's happening. I seldom wanted to put the book down and found myself often looking forward to getting back to it to see what happened next (even when I actually knew what happened next because I remembered it from real life!).The worst part is the depression you get from realizing how completely egotistical and supremely stupid most of the people running Hollywood really are. The author even rubs it in a bit by detailing the arrogance and ignorance and then letting us know how much money those people made almost by accident in some cases.As someone said, the author might not ever be able to have lunch in Hollywood again, but her loss is our gain. This is a fantastic read that I would recommend to anyone.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book quite a bit it did jump around told you a lot about the music business with David Giffin and then the movie business when Disney was run by Jeff Katzenberg on the on the animation side and of course the legendary Steven Spielberg this book goes into his background quite extensively it’s a good read and I enjoyed watching a few of the films mentioned in the book to go back there and understand all the fights and of course the greeting Hollywood especially on the part of David Giffin interesting to note that Spielberg is worth over 3 billion yet he never puts up a penny of his own money I guess that’s the Hollywood way
    • 4/5
      If you really wanted to know exactly how movies get made in Hollywood, then this is one of the books to make your must read list. Carefully researched and clearly written, you do not get the sense that the author is biased or has an ax to grind but is merely reporting the inside goings on behind the forming and operating of Dreamworks, the studio. I read it from cover to cover and it never dragged or got boring. Great stuff.