Spielberg named his production company after a $15,000 short about desert hitchhikers
Before Jaws, Steven Spielberg made Amblin', a short independent film about a man and a woman thumbing rides across the desert. It cost 15,000 dollars and won him directing work at Universal. He borrowed its title for the company that went on to make Gremlins, Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Amblin' came out in 1968, and the company's origins are dated variously: it is said to have been set up in 1969 and incorporated in 1970, while its official founding is usually given as 1975. On July 14 of that year Spielberg signed a four-picture deal to make films for Universal Pictures through the Amblin label, riding on the success of The Sugarland Express and Jaws. The firm remains independent, yet it works out of Bungalow 477 on Universal's backlot, and Universal has distributed many of its films.
Its first production, in 1978, was I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a Robert Zemeckis picture that Spielberg executive produced. Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall arrived in 1980 as production associates and later became partners. Oddly, some of the era's biggest Spielberg projects went out without the Amblin name: Poltergeist was credited to Steven Spielberg Productions, and the company went uncredited on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
After it was reincorporated as Amblin Entertainment and launched a television arm, the hits piled up: Gremlins, Innerspace, the Back to the Future trilogy, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, made with Disney and released under the Touchstone label as a PG film rather than the planned G. A partnership with the animator Don Bluth produced An American Tail and The Land Before Time before a budget dispute ended it in 1989. Amblin then set up its own London animation studio, Amblimation, which made three films, including Balto, before closing in 1997, with most staff moving to DreamWorks Animation.
Amblin has never owned a theme park, but its films fill other people's, from the E.T. Adventure dark ride to Jurassic Park: The Ride. In 2021 it agreed to make at least two films a year for Netflix.
Source: Amblin Entertainment
