Overview
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 1982 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 Amblin is an independent production company, Universal 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 such as 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), Matthew Robbins (*batteries not included ), 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, Hereafter), 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 trilogy), Martin Scorsese (Cape Fear), Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III), J. J. Abrams (Super 8), The Coen Brothers (True Grit), and Simon Wells (An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Balto).
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. Amblin's most critically acclaimed productions are E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), *batteries not included (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and Schindler's List (1993), the last of which was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture. A companion study guide for it, 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 2, Pinky and the Brain, ER, Freakazoid, Back to the Future, Family Dog, The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, Fievel's American Tails, The Land Before Time and Men in Black: The Series .
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 Studios has also collaborated with Amblin in such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Arachnophobia, Noises Off, A Far Off Place, War Horse and Lincoln (the latter two of which are DreamWorks productions but released by Disney`s Touchstone Pictures label as part of a 30-picture distribution deal between Disney and DreamWorks).
In 2011 in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox, the Terra Nova television series was released.
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