Less than a week after numerous reports indicated that Pop.com, a joint Internet venture of DreamWorks, Imagine Entertainment and Paul Allen, was close to a deal to be acquired by the Internet film portal IFilm, negotiations between the two companies have collapsed.

Today's (Tuesday) Wall Street Journal quoted DreamWorks principal Jeffrey Katzenberg as saying that the Pop.com partners decided that the deal with IFilm was ultimately "too limiting."

He indicated that Pop.com would be drastically scaled back, functioning for the time being as a small workshop to create original programming for the Internet.

However, it was not clear where that programming would be presented. Imagine principal Ron Howard seemed to indicate that Pop.com would take a wait-and-see attitude regarding the Web. "Our goal is to be lean enough and simple enough that we can respond to any opportunity that may come along," he said.

Source: Studio Briefing