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Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its productions, needing the help of the studios that distributed it. Its logo features the silhouette of E.T. riding in the basket on Elliott's bicycle flying in front of the moon from the movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Amblin is named after Spielberg's first commercially-released film, Amblin' (1968), a short independent film about a man and woman hitchhiking through the desert. The film, which cost $15,000 to produce, was shown for Universal Studios and won Spielberg more directing roles. Although Spielberg owns shares in both Amblin and DreamWorks, it's Universal that distributes many Amblin productions and Amblin operates out of a building on the Universal lot. In addition to various Spielberg films, Amblin has produced movies by other directors including Joe Dante (Gremlins, Small Soldiers, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Innerspace), Robert Zemeckis (the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), Brian Levant (the Flintstones duology), Penelope Spheeris (the 1994 film remake of The Little Rascals), Brad Silberling (Casper), Don Bluth (An American Tail, The Land Before Time), Clint Eastwood (The Bridges of Madison County, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima), Gil Kenan (Monster House), Martin Campbell (The Mask of Zorro, The Legend of Zorro), Richard Donner (The Goonies), Jan De Bont (Twister), Barry Sonnenfeld (the Men in Black duology), Martin Scorsese (Cape Fear) and Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III). The majority of these directors are close friends of Spielberg, who has an executive producer or producer credit on many but not all of Amblin's non-Spielberg films (his name does not appear on the credits of Small Soldiers, The Little Rascals, Cape Fear, or the two Flintstones films - the "Steven Spielrock Presents" credit on the latter notwithstanding). Amblin's most critically acclaimed production is Schindler's List (1993). The film was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture. (However, the Amblin logo does not appear on the film itself.) A companion study guide, Facing History, was prepared through a grant from Amblin and Universal. Amblin's television series credits include Amazing Stories, Tiny Toon Adventures, seaQuest DSV, Animaniacs, Earth, Pinky and the Brain, ER, Freakazoid, Back to the Future, Family Dog, The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, Fievel's American Tails and The Land Before Time. Fievel's American Tails and others were produced by Amblin's animation division Amblimation, which was active from 1991 until 1995. Another studio which has distributed many Amblin productions is Warner Bros. Entertainment. DreamWorks (which was co-founded by Spielberg) has distributed a number of Amblin productions since 1994. The Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group also has collaborated with Amblin in such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Arachnophobia, Noises Off and A Far Off Place. |
