Amblimation

---

title: "Amblimation" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["amblin-entertainment", "defunct-film-and-television-production-companies-of-the-united-kingdom", "film-production-companies-of-the-united-kingdom", "television-production-companies-of-the-united-kingdom", "defunct-american-animation-studios", "british-animation-studios", "defunct-companies-based-in-london", "british-companies-established-in-1989", "mass-media-companies-established-in-1989", "mass-media-companies-disestablished-in-1997", "1989-establishments-in-england", "1997-disestablishments-in-england", "steven-spielberg"] description: "British animation production subsidiary of Amblin Entertainment" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amblimation" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary British animation production subsidiary of Amblin Entertainment ::

::data[format=table title="infobox company"]

Field	Value
logo	[[File:Amblimation logo.svg
type	Subsidiary
industry	Animation
predecessor	Sullivan Bluth Studios (through distribution of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West by Universal Pictures)
foundation
fate	Closed
defunct
successor	Universal Animation Studios (through distribution of the An American Tail and Balto sequels, both by Universal Pictures)
location	Park House, 207–211 The Vale
location_city	Acton, London, England
location_country	United Kingdom
founder	Steven Spielberg
key_people	Kate Mallory (studio manager)
Simon Wells (director)
Cynthia Woodbyrne (production manager)
products	Animated films
parent	Amblin Entertainment
::

| logo = [[File:Amblimation logo.svg|frameless|class=skin-invert]] | type = Subsidiary | industry = Animation | predecessor = Sullivan Bluth Studios (through distribution of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West by Universal Pictures) | foundation = | fate = Closed | defunct = | successor = Universal Animation Studios (through distribution of the An American Tail and Balto sequels, both by Universal Pictures) | location = Park House, 207–211 The Vale | location_city = Acton, London, England | location_country = United Kingdom | founder = Steven Spielberg | key_people = Kate Mallory (studio manager) Simon Wells (director) Cynthia Woodbyrne (production manager) | products = Animated films | parent = Amblin Entertainment Amblimation was a British animation production company that served as the animation subsidiary of Amblin Entertainment. 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 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 feature music composed by James Horner and were 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 after the box office failures of We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story and Balto. All 250 of Amblimation's crew members went on to join DreamWorks Animation, which was later acquired in 2016 by Universal's parent companies Comcast and NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion.

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 West was 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, an animated adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats and an animated adaptation of William Steig's book Shrek!

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 Zondag to 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 Pictures with 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. DreamWorks would also pick up one of Amblimation's in-development projects, being the adaptation of Shrek! where it would become the 2001 animated film, Shrek.

Filmography

Theatrical feature films

::data[format=table]

Title	Release date	Director(s)	Story by	Screenplay by	Producer(s)	Budget	Box office gross	An American Tail: Fievel Goes West	We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story	Balto
	Phil Nibbelink
Simon Wells		Flint Dille	Steven Spielberg
Robert Watts	$16.5 million	$40,766,041
Charles Swenson
	Phil Nibbelink
Simon Wells
Ralph Zondag
Dick Zondag		John Patrick Shanley	Steve Hickner	$20 million	$9,317,021 (US)
	Simon Wells		Cliff Ruby
Elana Lesser
David Steven Cohen
Roger S.H. Schulman	$31 million	$11,348,324
Cliff Ruby
Elana Lesser
::

References

References

1. (28 October 2005). "The Animated Movie Guide". Chicago Review Press, Incorporated.
2. (28 September 2015). "The Tim Burton Encyclopedia". [[Rowman & Littlefield]].
3. "Chain letter".
4. Hofmeister, Sallie. (17 October 1994). "Hollywood Falls Hard for Animation". [[The New York Times]].
5. [https://archive.today/20130131150155/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/61614358.html?dids=61614358:61614358&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=May+03,+1992&author=BARBARA+ISENBERG&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&desc=A+look+inside+Hollywood+and+the+movies.+THE+CARTOON'S+THE+THING+Book+by+Kipling.+Musical+by+Mackintosh.+And+Next,+Animated+Movie+by+Spielberg&pqatl=google "A look inside Hollywood and the movies" – Los Angeles Times]
6. (17 November 1991). "Animation Really Keeps Steven Spielberg Moving". The Morning Call.
7. "Film: The Man Who Would Be Walt".
8. James, Meg. (28 April 2016). "Comcast's NBCUniversal buys DreamWorks Animation in $3.8-billion deal".
9. (1967). "Power User, Engineer in Charge and Work Manager". Power & works engineering.
10. (28 July 2021). "An Interview With Phil Nibbelink, Roger Rabbit Animator".
11. "ROLL BACK THE ROCK: AN ORAL HISTORY OF WE'RE BACK! A DINOSAUR'S STORY FOR ITS 30TH ANNIVERSARY".
12. "Exclusive interview with Balto director Simon Wells". animationsource.org.
13. (21 December 2022). "Tape 68 – The Making of Prince of Egypt Part1". M Gyll.
14. (4 May 2010). "The Men Who Would Be King". [[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]].
15. (12 June 2001). "The Operator". [[Crown Publishing Group]].
16. (5 November 2024). "Box Office Poison". Hanover Square Press.
17. (16 May 1991). "The Feature-Length Cartoon Returns". [[The New York Times]].
18. "An American Tail: Fievel Goes West".
19. (24 November 2023). "Jurassic Park Was Such a Massive Hit Even Steven Spielberg Tried Cashing In".
20. "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story".
21. "Balto". [[The Wrap]].

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::