TURBO SLOWS DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

The box-office failure of DreamWorks Animation’s Turbo — one of the studio’s few misfires — forced it to take a $13.5 million charge during its fourth quarter. In its SEC filing, the company said that it also recorded a charge of about half that amount — $6.7 million — for other content. Nevertheless, excluding the two charges, the company presented an overall upbeat overview of the quarter, posting a profit of $17.2 million on revenue of $204.3 million versus a loss of $82.7 million on revenue of $264.6 million during the comparable quarter a year ago. For the year, it recorded a profit of $55.1 million versus a loss of $36.4 million in 2012. Speaking to analysts in a conference call, DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg said, “Turbo faced one of the most competitive feature film environments we have seen. … While it performed fairly well during the fourth quarter at the international box office and its home video release, it still fell short of our expectations.”