Template:Pp-vandalism
|
"What would I do if I were me...?"
|
Amblimation was the British animation production subsidiary of Amblin Entertainment.[1][2] It was formed by Steven Spielberg in May 1989, following the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and after he parted ways with Don Bluth, due to creative differences. It was stationed in what was originally the D. Napier & Son factory in Acton, London and had 250 crew members from 15 different nations.[3] It only produced three feature films: An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), and Balto (1995), all three of which were composed by James Horner and distributed by Universal Pictures. The company's mascot, Fievel Mousekewitz, appears in its production logo. It was based in the former Eaton Yale and Towne UK factory in Acton, London, and had 250 crew members from 15 different nations.
The studio closed in 1997 after only eight years of operation and its office building became a self-storage facility called Access Self-Storage. All 250 of Amblimation's crew members went on to join DreamWorks Animation,[4] which was later acquired in 2016 by Universal's parent company NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion.[5]
History[]
Film director and producer Steven Spielberg first began working in animation when he served as executive producer on An American Tail and The Land Before Time, both directed by Don Bluth, as well as Robert Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Following the successes of all three films, Spielberg planned to collaborate with Bluth again to produce a sequel to An American Tail; however, owing to creative differences, both men parted ways. In light of Bluth's departure, Spielberg chose former Disney animator Phil Nibbelink and former Richard Williams storyboard artist Simon Wells, the great-grandson of science-fiction author H. G. Wells, both of whom had previously worked with him as supervising animators on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, to direct the sequel, Fievel Goes West. In order to produce the film, Spielberg formed Amblimation, a collaboration between Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, which was based out of the former Eaton Yale and Towne factory in Acton, London, and had an international crew of 250 members from 15 different nations. Fievel Goes Westwas officially put into production when the studio first opened in May 1989, and at the time, the studio was also developing We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story and an animated adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats.
As production on Fievel Goes West was wrapping up, Nibbelink and Wells began storyboarding on We're Back!. Once the animatic for We're Back! was completed in 1991, Spielberg brought in brothers Dick and Ralph Zondagto continue directing it, and assigned Nibbelink and Wells to direct Cats, which was intended to be Amblimation's third film after We're Back!. However, production on Cats was delayed continuously, due to Webber's dissatisfaction with the story direction.Eventually, Cats was scrapped, and Nibbelink and Wells returned to finish We're Back!. However, shortly afterwards, Wells left the project again to direct Balto, leaving Nibbelink to finish We're Back! alone. Ultimately, We're Back! was a box-office bomb, grossing just over $9 million and failing to reach the massive success of Jurassic Park, which Spielberg had released the previous summer.
The commercial failure of We're Back! led to budgetary constraints on Balto, and would lead to it being Amblimation's final film.In October 1994, Spielberg co-founded DreamWorks Pictureswith former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and music executive David Geffen, and relocated 120 of Amblimation's crew members to Los Angeles as Balto neared completion, to form DreamWorks Animation. In early June 1995, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., then-head of Universal's parent company at the time, Seagram, agreed to discontinue Amblimation as part of a distribution deal with Geffen, despite the objections of his colleague, Michael Ovitz. After Balto failed at the box office, Amblimation was officially closed, and most of the remaining crew members joined DreamWorks to begin working on The Prince of Egypt, while some moved on to join other studios.
Filmography[]
Theatrical feature films[]
| Release Date | Title | Box Office Gross |
|---|---|---|
| November 22, 1991 | An American Tail: Fievel Goes West | $40.6 million |
| November 24, 1993 | We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story | $9.3 million (US) |
| December 22, 1995 | Balto | $11.3 million |
See also[]
- Illumination
- Amblin Entertainment
- DreamWorks Animation
- Universal Interactive
- Universal Animation Studios
- Sullivan Bluth Studios
- List of Universal Pictures theatrical animated feature films
- List of unproduced Universal Pictures animated projects
References[]
- ↑ Hofmeister, Sallie. "Hollywood Falls Hard for Animation", The New York Times, October 17, 1994.
- ↑ "A look inside Hollywood and the movies" - Los Angeles Times
- ↑ "Animation Really Keeps Steven Spielberg Moving", November 17, 1991.
- ↑ "Film: The Man Who Would Be Walt". https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/spielberg-walt.html.
- ↑ James, Meg (28 April 2016). "Comcast's NBCUniversal buys DreamWorks Animation in $3.8-billion deal". https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-nbcuniversal-buys-dreamworks--20160428-story.html.
Template:Universal Animation Studios Template:Animation industry in the United Kingdom
| v - e - dSteven Spielberg | |
|---|---|
| Awards and nominations • Bibliography • Filmography | |
| Films directed | Firelight (1964) • Slipstream (1967) • Amblin' (1968) • Night Gallery ("Eyes" segment, 1969) • L.A. 2017 (1971) • Duel (1971) • Something Evil (1972) • Savage (1973) • The Sugarland Express (1974, also wrote) • Jaws (1975) • Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, also wrote) • 1941 (1979) • Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) • E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) • Twilight Zone: The Movie ("Kick the Can" segment, 1983) • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) • The Color Purple (1985) • Empire of the Sun (1987) • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) • Always (1989) • Hook (1991) • Jurassic Park (1993) • Schindler's List (1993) • The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) • Amistad (1997) • Saving Private Ryan (1998) • A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001, also wrote) • Minority Report (2002) • Catch Me If You Can (2002) • The Terminal (2004) • War of the Worlds (2005) • Munich (2005) • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) • The Adventures of Tintin (2011) • War Horse (2011) • Lincoln (2012) • Bridge of Spies (2015) • The BFG (2016) • The Post (2017) • Ready Player One (2018) • Funimals (2018) • The Hampster Movie (2019) • West Side Story (2020) • Gwen and Dan: Level Two (2021) |
| Films written | Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies (1973) • Poltergeist (1982, also produced) • The Goonies (1985) |
| Films produced | An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991) • Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) • Flags of Our Fathers (2006) • Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) • Super 8 (2011) • The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014) • Penguinopolis (2018) |
| Television | Amazing Stories (1985–87) • High Incident (1996–97) • Invasion America (1998) |
| See also | USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education
Amblin Partners |
