{"id":2153,"date":"2018-08-14T09:42:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T14:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2018-11-13T12:55:27","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T18:55:27","slug":"bill-damaschke-85-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/2018\/08\/14\/bill-damaschke-85-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Damaschke \u201985"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Damaschke \u201985 is a former Chief Creative Officer at\u00a0DreamWorks Animation\u00a0and as of recently, current president of Animation and Family Entertainment at\u00a0Skydance Media.<\/p>\n

After graduating from IWU with a B.F.A. in musical theater, Damaschke spent several years in New York working as an actor both on and off Broadway, and as an assistant for producers and executives at movie studios and record labels, along with \u201ca million other things.\u201d But after moving to Los Angeles on a whim, he decided to pursue a job as a production assistant and ended up spending over 20 years at DreamWorks Animation, which at the time was a startup company led by film director and producer Steven Spielberg, former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and music executive David Geffen.<\/p>\n

He rose from an entry-level position to the company\u2019s Chief Creative Officer. Damaschke served as a production assistant on Prince of Egypt, the company\u2019s first animated film, and since then has worked on 27 other DreamWorks animated films \u2013 including box office hits\u00a0How to Train Your Dragon<\/em>, the\u00a0Madagascar<\/em>\u00a0franchise and the\u00a0Shrek<\/em>\u00a0franchise. He also helped launch the company\u2019s theater and television divisions. All the while, DreamWorks was constantly expanding, as a whirlwind of animators, writers, storyboard artists, directors and other creatives under Damaschke\u2019s purview made film after film, sometimes as many as five films every two years. Damaschke\u2019s journey also eventually lead to the creation of his own production company, StoryKey Entertainment, which is producing musicals such as\u00a0Moulin Rouge!<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Prom<\/em>, coming to Broadway later this year.<\/p>\n

Now, as president of Animation and Family Entertainment at Skydance Media, Damaschke looks forward to continuing to lead creative teams in crafting animated feature films that will leave a lasting impression on viewers of all ages.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2010, Skydance Media specializes in film, television, interactive platforming, and most recently, animation. Damaschke was brought on board in 2017 to head the company\u2019s animation division, which has partnered with Ilion Animation Studios in Spain for two upcoming fantasy films\u00a0Luck<\/em>\u00a0(March 2021) and\u00a0Split<\/em>\u00a0(TBA), as well as several others in the production pipeline.<\/p>\n

At the helm of this new branch of Skydance, Damaschke finds himself in a similar \u201cstartup mode\u201d to when he first began at DreamWorks Animation. \u201cIt requires you to be super excited and roll up your sleeves, and certainly in the environment and culture we have here at Skydance, every single person\u2019s contribution matters,\u201d said Damaschke.<\/p>\n

The chance to create movies from an entirely clean slate is an exciting prospect for Damaschke. \u201cWe live in a world where there\u2019s so many reboots and so many remakes. And I love going to all those movies. But that\u2019s the one very clear thing about Skydance. We\u2019re starting from scratch and we are making original films.\u201d
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Congratulations, Bill!<\/p>\n

Read the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Damaschke \u201985 is a former Chief Creative Officer at\u00a0DreamWorks Animation\u00a0and as of recently, current president of Animation and Family Entertainment at\u00a0Skydance Media. After graduating from IWU with a B.F.A. in musical theater, Damaschke spent several years in New York … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":296,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2155,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions\/2155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/1980sclassnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}