The year that DreamWorks Pictures was founded was the same year that DreamWorks Television was also founded. The studio produced a number of commercial and critical hits including the sitcom Spin City, cult teen comedy Freaks and Geeks, WWII drama Band of Brothers, Denis Leary’s Rescue Me and the Spielberg-produced shows United States of Tara, The Pacific and Smash. DreamWorks Television only lasted until 2013 when it folded into Amblin Television (I guess Spielberg realized how redundant it was to have two TV production companies). Of course when it comes to animated shows, the DreamWorks name is still alive with DreamWorks Animation Television.

The earliest incarnation of DreamWorks Animation’s TV division formed in 1996. Originally headed by former Walt Disney Television Animation executives Gary Krisel and David Simon, the company was originally known as DreamWorks Television Animation, although they only produced two animated shows. One was a sci-fi series called Invasion America which was co-created by Spielberg and Star Trek film producer Harve Bennett and ran for a single season on The WB in prime time. The other show was the much more comedic Toonsylvania which ran recurring spooky segments in a similar fashion to Animaniacs and lasted 2 seasons from 1998 to 1999 on Fox Kids. As you probably guessed, these shows were not the most popular. The same year that Toonsylvania ended, DreamWorks Television Animation shut down. The animation crew shifted to the studio’s direct-to-video unit and placed under the same umbrella as DreamWorks Animation for simplification purposes.

After this, DreamWorks Animation itself began producing their own TV shows, including the kids’ series Alienators: Evolution Continues (an animated continuation of Ivan Reitman’s 2001 sci-fi comedy Evolution) which aired on Fox Kids from 2001 to 2002, as well as the adult series Father of the Pride a sitcom about Siegfried and Roy’s star lion Larry (John Goodman) and his family. It had a short-lived and largely derided run on NBC from 2004 to 2005.

The first time DreamWorks Animation had a successful TV series was when they teamed up with Nickelodeon Animation to produce the Madagascar spin-off series The Penguins of Madagascar which ran for 3 seasons from 2008 to 2012 on Nickelodeon and from 2013 to 2015 on Nicktoons, getting decent reviews in the process for how funny it is. The success of that show was followed by an avalanche of other TV shows based on DreamWorks Animation films, including Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness which also aired on both Nickelodeon and Nicktoons from 2011 to 2016, DreamWorks Dragons (2012-18, Cartoon Network/Netflix), Monsters vs. Aliens (2013-14, Nickelodeon) and Turbo Fast (2013-16, Netflix) which is the show that kicked off the studio’s ongoing partnership with Netflix (although the studio would later make TV shows for Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock and Apple TV+) as well as the official formation of DreamWorks Animation Television in 2013.

Whenever I list a bunch of films or TV shows in my articles I usually try to give you an idea about the reception and quality of each of them, but there are way too many DreamWorks Animation Television shows for me to talk about them all in depth. Basically, the majority of their filmography consists of shows based on their film franchises. These include:

Madagascar

The spin-off prequel series All Hail King Julien (2014-17, Netflix) and Madagascar: A Little Wild (2020-22, Hulu/Peacock) featuring younger versions of the four main characters from Madagascar

Shrek

The Adventures of Puss in Boots (2015-18, Netflix)

The Croods

The hand-drawn animated Dawn of the Croods (2015-17, Netflix) and the computer-animated The Croods: Family Tree (2021-23, Hulu/Peacock)

Home

Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh (2016-18, Netflix)

Spirit

Spirit: Riding Free (2017-20, Netflix)

Trolls

Trolls: The Beat Goes On! (2018-19, Netflix)

The Boss Baby

The Boss Baby: Back in Business (2018-20, Netflix) and The Boss Baby: Back in the Crib (2022-23, Netflix)

Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny (2018-19, Prime Video) and Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight (2022-23, Netflix) which featured Jack Black reprising the role for TV for the first time

Captain Underpants

The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants (2018-20, Netflix)

Dragons

DreamWorks Dragons: Rescue Riders (2019-22, Netflix/Peacock) and DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms (2021-23, Hulu/Peacock)

Abominable

Abominable and the Invisible City (2022-23, Hulu/Peacock)

Megamind

Megamind Rules! (2024, Peacock) which was kicked off by the film Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate

Following DreamWorks Animation’s acquisition of Classic Media (renamed DreamWorks Classics) in 2012, the studio had gotten a lot more IPs to make shows out of. The media library is the rights holder of such properties as Felix the Cat, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Rocky and Bullwinkle and VeggieTales as well as the animation studios UPA and Filmation. Out of this deal, DreamWorks Animation Television produced VeggieTales in the House (2014-16, Netflix) followed by VeggieTales in the City (2017), The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show (2015-17, Netflix), The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2018, Prime Video), Harvey Girls Forever! (2018-20, Netflix) and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-20, Netflix) with more on the way, I’m sure. They also took advantage of Comcast’s 2016 acquisition of DreamWorks Animation by diving into the Universal library as well, teaming up with Amblin Television to produce the Netflix series Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous (2020-22) and its sequel series Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (2024-present).

But some of DreamWorks Animation Television’s most popular and acclaimed shows are their original ideas. Other shows produced by the studio (most of which are aimed at kids and families) include Dinotrux (2015-18, Netflix), Voltron: Legendary Defender (2016-18, Netflix), Guillermo del Toro’s Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (2016-18, Netflix), Archibald’s Next Big Thing (2019-21, Netflix/Peacock), Cleopatra in Space (2020-21, Peacock), Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (2020, Netflix), The Mighty Ones (2020-22, Hulu/Peacock), Doug Unplugs (2020-22, Apple TV+) and the interactive show Gabby’s Dollhouse (2021-present, Netflix).

The studio may have a reputation among animation fans for its onslaught of television programming (DreamWorks Animation Television produced eight different shows in 2020 alone) but the studio is also one of the most prolific production companies of animated children’s television right now, with many being watched regularly by families around the world and some even receiving critical praise and telling surprisingly smart stories.