The Quiet Force Behind DreamWorks

DreamWorks Animation/20th Century Fox

DreamWorks Animation's latest computer-animated film, "Turbo," arrives in theaters this week.

GLENDALE, Calif. â€" Inside a modest upstairs office at DreamWorks Animation here â€" the one next to a framed poster reading “You’ve Got the Goods, Step Out and Show ‘Em!” â€" sits one of the film industry’s most important executives. His name is Bill Damaschke.

Never heard of him? Neither has most of Hollywood.

Mr. Damaschke, 49, is chief creative officer at DreamWorks Animation, which means that he runs the factory floor, working with directors, writers and artists to deliver hits like “Kung Fu Panda,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and the “Madagascar” movies. On Wednesday, the studio’s latest computer-animated film, “Turbo,” about a speedy garden snail, arrives in theaters.

“I trust Bill’s taste more than anybody else’s, including my own,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation’s chief executive.

Mr. Katzenberg has always been the studio’s public face. It was partly design, a way for a small publicly traded company to get noticed on Wall Street, and partly because Mr. Katzenberg is who he is: relentless. But while Mr. Katzenberg is still involved in major artistic decisions, he has been moving further away from the day-to-day running of his company’s movie pipeline, which is expanding. DreamWorks Animation in 2014 will begin releasing three movies a year, up from two.

While Mr. Katzenberg is working on a new TV endeavor, an entertainment complex in Shanghai and indoor theme parks in Russia, Mr. Damaschke (pronounced DAH-mash-kee) is increasingly calling the creative shots. “As someone who really doesn’t like attention, I feel almost uncomfortable saying this, but that is true,” Mr. Damaschke said last month. “We put things in front of Jeffrey less frequently.”

Mr. Damaschke, who started at the studio 18 years ago as a production assistant and rose to chief creative officer in 2011, would be entitled to an insufferable ego. He was blessed with dashing good looks and churns out blockbusters; over the last five years, DreamWorks Animation’s nine films have taken in roughly $5 billion worldwide after accounting for inflation, compared with about $3.6 billion for Pixar’s five releases. Instead, the dapper Mr. Damaschke is quiet and polite, perhaps reflecting his Midwestern upbringing.

Then again, unassuming is all the rage in Hollywood: Kevin Feige, who expertly runs Marvel Studios, is also nearly invisible. If you “strut your stuff,” as another poster outside Mr. Damaschke’s office instructs, you become vulnerable when movies misfire, as they inevitably do.

Despite positive reviews, DreamWorks Animation’s dark “Rise of the Guardians,” released in November and directed by Peter Ramsey, cost more than $250 million to make and market but took in $303.7 million, roughly half of which went to theater owners. The company wrote down $87 million tied to the film.

“Guardians” is not Mr. Damaschke’s first disappointment. The money-losing Broadway adaptation of “Shrek” was also his baby. But the movie’s failure was particularly crushing.

“Some of the things that we thought were cool may have given pause to the most important person buying tickets, and that’s mom,” he said. Noting that the movie was a big seller on DVD, he added, “I’m still healing from the ‘Guardians’ experience, to be brutally honest with you.”

“Turbo” is another creative gamble. Aside from the obvious â€" it stars a snail â€" the movie was directed by David Soren, a first-time feature filmmaker. Early reviews have been mixed. The Hollywood Reporter deemed it “narratively challenged” and zeroed in on a theme that could turn off mom: “If you’re too small or weak or otherwise incapable of greatness, you have a shot to win if you’re juiced.”

But Variety called it an “endearing underdog story” that finds the animation studio “taking a welcome risk and betting on a far-fetched story idea.”

“Turbo” in many ways represents a storytelling and artistic shift that Mr. Damaschke has quietly been implementing at the company. In its early days, DreamWorks Animation movies clung tightly to the successful “Shrek” formula: irreverent humor, pop culture inside jokes, lots of action, celebrity voices. “Turbo,” which riffs on the “Fast & Furious” movies, certainly has some of that D.N.A.