To read Michael Cieply in the NYT today, the madcap world of Steven Spielberg is percolating along copacetically:

Steven Spielberg seems headed to the Walt Disney Company after a surprise parting of the ways with Universal Pictures, with whom he signed a deal just four months ago. The director’s production company, DreamWorks SKG, was in advanced talks on Friday on a deal to distribute its movies through Disney. …

The deal would shore up Disney’s movie studio, which has been struggling lately, reporting a 64 percent decline in operating income in the most recent quarter. It would also give Mr. Spielberg a huge global marketing platform for his family-friendly work.

Surprises! Advanced talks! Shoring up Disney! A huge marketing platform!

It’s all very exciting.

However, if the news isn’t emanating from inside St. Steven’s pants, it could be interpreted somewhat differently. Like:

Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks became a Lost Dutchman studio yesterday after Universal not only rejected the filmmaker’s desperate plea for more money but canceled its distribution deal entirely.

DreamWorks, which wore out its welcome last year at Paramount, couldn’t find support elsewhere in Hollywood and was forced to look for less discriminating financial funding overseas. It thought it had sufficient cash from an Indian company eager to make inroads into Hollywood.

When that wasn’t enough, it then tried to alter the terms of the straight-ahead distribution deal it had with Universal, trying to get it to help fund its operations. But that just ended up alienating the company, which kicked Mr. Spielberg out the door—and did it publicly. Given the situations of the other major studios, that left DreamWorks little choice but to go to Disney.

But the ministudio’s problem is this: While the filmmaker’s name is synonymous with the megablockbuster, he has seldom delivered those blockbusters to DreamWorks itself, preferring to structure them as outside personal deals with other studios.

The strategy has made Mr. Spielberg a billionaire but it has also meant that DreamWorks—run by the man who is by far the most commercially successful filmmaker the world has ever seen—has paradoxically never been financially secure. How that reality, as well as DreamWork’s boutique tastes and the need to care and feed Mr. Spielberg, will fit in at the non-nonsense Disney remains to be seen.

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Previously in Hitsville:

“Tropic Thunder”: A case study of PR-friendly journalism
St. Steven Spielberg
Return to “The Spielberg Zone”
Indiana Jones Agonistes
Scary Steven Spielberg!