NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Move over Nemo. A great white shark named Lino and his vegetarian son Lenny just gave investors another option.

They'd better have kids

Feeding off the blowout success of its marine-themed animation flick, "Shark Tale," DreamWorks SKG spun off its animation film unit late Wednesday with an $812 million initial public offering. The IPO priced 29 million shares at $28 per share, Reuters reported, higher than their estimated $23 to $25 range.

The deal gives DreamWorks Animation a market value of nearly $3 billion. Company shares will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol DWA.

The long-awaited sale, first announced in July, comes at an auspicious time for DreamWorks. "Shark Tale," the latest of eight animation films produced by the 10-year-old studio, has reaped $137.6 million in domestic box office receipts since its Oct. 1 release.

What's more, DreamWorks' "Shrek 2," which this summer set box office records for an animated film, will come out next week on DVD, an even more lucrative format than ticket sales. Nov. 5, the DVD's debut date, happens to be the same day that chief rival Pixar Animation Studios -- until now the only pure-play stock in the animation arena -- releases its next feature film, "The Incredibles," in theaters nationwide.

Analysts, citing DreamWorks' recent run of success and investor excitement over computer-animated films generally, predicted that DreamWorks Animation shares will do well in the short term.

In the long run, however, there are doubts that DreamWorks Animation stock will hold up against the competition.

DreamWorks has a spotty record when it comes to animation -- unlike chief rival Pixar Animation Studios (Research), which has never misfired with a feature film and whose stock is trading near an all-time high (although it's fallen as much as 5 percent as the DreamWorks Animation IPO nears).

Of the eight animated films DreamWorks has produced, only "Shrek" and its sequel have been blowout hits, with $1.36 billion in combined worldwide ticket sales, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. In fact, "Shrek 2" has brought in more revenues this year for DreamWorks than all six of its other releases in 2004, all of them live action. "Shrek 2" is now the most successful animated feature in history and No. 3 overall.

But DreamWorks Animation has had its share of box office duds, too. "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" and "Sinbad: The Legend of the Seven Seas" both flopped. The animation unit, weighed down by costly marketing campaigns, has lost money in three of the last five years.

As for the splashy "Shark Tale," which some movie critics panned, it was not at all clear whether this recent release would sink or swim at the box office.

Given such uncertainty, analysts had wondered lately why DreamWorks waited until now to go public, when a major IPO was in the bag after "Shrek 2" emerged as a clear blockbuster.

For DreamWorks, the opportunity is obvious. Animation, namely computer-generated graphics, has become a hot genre and a public offering is one way DreamWorks can cash in on the hype when other company ventures have floundered.

Founded in 1994 by Hollywood powerhouses Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, DreamWorks has long aspired to be a major entertainment distributor. But forays into video games and music floundered, and television is still nascent.

One theory about why DreamWorks waited until now to take its crown jewel public: DreamWorks officials were eager to show investors that, despite the intoxicating success of "Shrek," their animation unit is more than a one-hit wonder.

Toward that end, the studio recently teamed up with NBC Universal to produce its first television computer-generated animation.

Ratings for "Father of the Pride," about white lions performing in the "Siegfried & Roy" show in Las Vegas, have declined since its Aug. 31 premiere. And parent groups are up in arms over the show's adult themes.

The company "wants to show it can expand the animation unit without doing just movies. It's a tough game," said independent stock research analyst Dennis McAlpine.

"Pixar has had a remarkable run of success," continued McAlpine. "But all Pixar has to worry about is one release a year."

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With the television foray floundering, the pressure was on "Shark Tale" to hit big, with some analysts predicting a flop would ruin DreamWorks' IPO plans.

Even though the advance buzz on Wall Street and from box office analysts wasn't great, "Shark Tale" has benefited from a dearth of big box office draws generally -- and family feature films in particular.

DreamWorks faces stiff competition soon -- from Pixar's "The Incredibles", Viacom-owned Paramount's "The SpongeBob Square Pants Movie" and "The Polar Express" from Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner and corporate cousin to CNN/Money.

So now might be just the perfect window of opportunity.