However it has been far from plain sailing for their company. Plans for a modern studio complex have been stalled by environmental concerns. The first offerings from Dreamworks Television have struggled to find an audience.

Many producers have (anonymously) called the company a disappointment, though in fairness, that may reflect Dreamworks' desire to restrain costs - and producer fees.

Now, though, three years after Dreamworks SKG was announced, The Peacemaker has arrived and movie-goers can begin to make up their own minds.

The film opens with a daring, James Bond-style train robbery in Russia. Rogue officers steal nine nuclear warheads, intending to sell them to the highest bidder, and cover their tracks by setting off a nuclear blast.

Enter Dr Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman), a nuclear scientist, and Tom Devoe (George Clooney), an unorthodox intelligence officer. The two Americans spot the subterfuge and race to recover the 'loose nukes'.

Despite their efforts, one bomb ends up in the hands of a Bosnian terrorist, driven mad with grief at the death of his family in the siege of Sarajevo, determined to teach the world a lesson.

No less a luminary than Tom Hanks has already joked that when the first Dreamworks film opens, the reaction would be: 'Is that it?' Parks and McDonald laugh. Still, McDonald urges people not to expect a cinema revolution. 'We're not going to try to reinvent what's great about movies, and American movies in particular. We're going to try hard. We'll fail on occasion, but we'll try to make it smarter, to discover new talent.' That includes Parks and McDonald themselves, who alternate taking producer credit on Dreamworks films. Neither has been a studio executive before.

'I've never had a job, I mean, other than working on projects,' Parks admits without apology. He is a three-time Oscar nominee, though, once for a 1978 documentary he directed, then five years later for writing the screenplay for Wargames, and finally as producer of Awakenings.

The pair are so much in sync that they can finish each other's sentences. They both began as documentary and news producers, and later worked together on films at Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.

Their news and documentary background led them to an expose about the dangers of 'loose nukes' by journalists Leslie and Andrew Cockburn, which led to The Peacemaker.

Since the film is inspired by fact, it does not follow the usual action movie formula.

'If you look at the past 10 years,' observes Parks, 'the one thing that American cinema has done very well at has been action movies - big glossy action movies, that and science-fiction event movies.

'However, it almost feels like we're at the end of a cycle now, because there's been a tendency in the past two or three years, with even our really good action movies, to go towards more pyrotechnics, bigger explosions, more gloss, less emphasis on character, less emphasis on writing.

'Given the source material of The Peacemaker, we really asked: 'Can we go after other values in this movie? Can we go after values of realism? Can we ask the audience to step into a world and a situation that is authentic?' ' Director Mimi Leder agrees. 'The most challenging part of the movie was to bring the human element into it.' Leder, best known for her work on the TV series ER, was picked by Spielberg to direct The Peacemaker - her first feature film.

'I didn't want to do just an action movie, I wanted to do a story about this terrorist who's in so much pain that he takes this bomb and wants to give a message to the world.

'We wanted to put a face on him. And I thought that if we could put ourselves in his shoes . . . if you'd lost your family to sniper fire, would you cross this line? Would you lose your humanity?' Much of Dreamworks' key talent - including Leder - was already working at Amblin, but Dreamworks is not merely Amblin with a new label.

Parks and McDonald remember that it was easier to get approval to buy the Cockburn's article, but that, 'it's terrifying. You're spending your own company's money'.

Dreamworks was also able to take a risk no other studio would consider at the time: hiring Clooney as the lead for their first film. Clooney remembers receiving the offer before any of his other starring roles had opened.

'It was Thanksgiving, almost two years ago now,' he said. 'I got a script with a cover letter on it that just said Dreamworks across the top, and it was a handwritten note from Steven, that I have framed at home right now, that just said: 'This is our first project for Dreamworks. Do you want to do it?' So I didn't open the script. I called him and said yes. Then I read it. I was glad it was a good script.' Clooney's enthusiasm remained as the script went into production.

'It was like being part of an independent film in a way, because everybody was figuring it out,' he recalls.

'There was no chain of command of who to talk to or where to go through. They were putting their company together, which was exciting. It was exciting to be there for the beginning of something.' Dreamworks' chain of command differs in one key respect from other movie studios, where 'the further you go up from management to owner, the further you get from the practice of making films', says Parks.

'The further up the ladder of management and ownership you go at our company, the closer you get to Steven Spielberg. Accordingly, Dreamworks as a company is pretty much run by film-makers.' Spielberg, the most successful film-maker in history, sets the tone for the whole company. 'Steven's a very interesting man in that for him, the normal boundary between art and commerce doesn't really exist,' says Parks.

'I've seen him get as excited about creating an edge-of-your-seat action scene about the sequel to Jurassic Park as he did about depicting the horrors of the holocaust.

'In other words, he really does make movies that somehow either delight him or challenge him or move him, and that's the ultimate barometer.

'And I think that's the sort of thing he looks for us to do.' Dreamworks will attempt to delight, challenge and move audiences with a diverse range of films. After The Peacemaker Spielberg will direct his first movie for the company, Amistad, the story of a slave uprising in 1839, and Mouse Hunt, a comedy about two dim brothers plagued by a mouse.

Then there will be Deep Impact, a 'character-oriented' look at how Earth deals with the impending impact of a comet; In Dreams, a psychological thriller from Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire ), and Saving Private Ryan, a World War II story to be directed by Spielberg.

The company also plans an ambitious number of animated films, beginning with Prince of Egypt, a musical version of Exodus.

While Geffen concentrates on the music side of the company, animation is the special bailiwick of the 'K' in SKG, Katzenberg. He supervises the company's television projects and Dreamworks Animation, and has re-assembled many of the creators of Disney's recent animated hits.

Katzenberg, a notoriously hands-on studio chief in his Disney days, is content to let Spielberg run the film division, says McDonald, but Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen are friends, and share opinions freely.

'There is a nice interchange between departments in that way,' says McDonald. 'Even Steven will be involved. He'll come in for a cut of an animated movie.' That may be Dreamworks' most important innovation: a more flexible way to create all forms of entertainment.

'We're lucky that we've built the company now, so it reflects the realities of the entertainment business now.

'Other studios were built at a time when they were in the business solely of financing, producing, distributing and even exhibiting films.

'So when other venues such as television or record companies grew up they were always seen as ancillary companies. There tends to be a big bureaucratic distance between them.

'But it's different now. We're really in the business of intellectual property, and we're in a time when talent freely flows between different divisions.

'Think of the extraordinary acting and writing talent that has come out of television in the past 10 years - Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Jim Brooks. Our company reflects that in the way we operate. There's a lot of interchange and communication between divisions.' Ultimately, Parks offers film-goers one assurance.

'If we're lucky enough to attract good talent, and if we're lucky enough for them and all of us to do our best job, the movie has a chance of being special.

'That sounds very silly, but the truth is 80 per cent of the movies we make in our business are made to fill a distribution line, or at the very best it'll be a pretty good comedy or a pretty good thriller, or whatever. It would be good to try to make ideas which if you do them well could have something special about them.' The Peacemaker opens in Hong Kong on Thursday