General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal unit is still in acquisition talks with film studio DreamWorks SKG, GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt confirmed in a Russian newspaper interview published Thursday.

It's always hard to talk about negotiations that are still going on. I guess it's a question of price, a purely financial issue,"" Immelt said in an interview published in Russian in business daily Vedomosti. He gave no further details.

DreamWorks was formed in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Immelt's remarks appear to confirm a Los Angeles Times story on Oct. 15 that NBC Universal had made a new offer for the business two weeks after talks broke down over price.

The paper said GE had cut its offer from $1 billion to $900 million in addition to covering $500 million of DreamWorks' debt.

The same paper reported five days later that the only rival suitor for Dreamworks, Viacom Inc.'s (Research) Paramount Pictures, had ended its pursuit of the studio because the $1 billion asking price was too high.

NBC Universal is 80 percent owned by General Electric (Research) and 20 percent by French company Vivendi Universal.

Source: CNN"