DreamWorks’ financial woes threaten a pet project.

DreamWorks intended to write another big check to retain the right to partner on and produce a separate batch of projects that it had to leave behind at Paramount. In that latter batch was Lincoln. But to stay in the game on Lincoln and the other projects, DreamWorks had to buy two completed films that it made during its time at Paramount: The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings), and A Thousand Words, a comedy starring Eddie Murphy. And DreamWorks didn't have the money.

So now Paramount is deciding whether it wants to make Lincoln. The decider is Brad Grey—the man the DreamWorks team treated for a long time as a mortal enemy. Paramount already passed on Lincoln a couple of years ago, citing the size of the budget. Since then, Spielberg has trimmed the cost to about $50 million. Still, this doesn't seem like an easy call: The Lincoln movie—an earnest 19^th-century drama—calls to mind one of Spielberg's least commercially successful films, Amistad.

A source close to Spielberg says the director is busy with his next film, Tintin, and is not wringing his hands over Paramount's decision. But another source associated with the project, asked about the process, said, "I think it's called water-boarding."

If Lincoln does go forward, there might be a disappointment in store for Spielberg's new partners at Disney. As has been reported, despite the blowup between Spielberg and Universal, there are still many ties between the two—so many that Universal is expected to let Spielberg stay in his quarters on the lot.

As he has done since 1984, Spielberg continues to serve as a consultant on the Universal theme parks, for which he collects a princely 2 percent of the gate from all of the parks outside Southern California. That adds up to tens of millions of dollars—as much as $50 million a year.

Clearly, Spielberg had no intention of relinquishing that role, even though his company's movies now will be distributed through a different company with a few theme parks of its own. To avoid issues, the DreamWorks deal with Disney stipulates that no DreamWorks movie will be used as the basis for a theme-park attraction anywhere, period. It must have pained Disney to make a deal for DreamWorks movies when Spielberg is still bound to the competition; after all, Spielberg has been responsible for successful attractions from Jaws to Transformers.