Description
Amblin Partners, is an American entertainment company that is the successor to the live-action counterpart of DreamWorks and a production company, led by Steven Spielberg, that develops and produces films under the Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures banners, as well as television series through Amblin Television. The company's investment partners include Reliance Group's Reliance Entertainment, Hasbro's Entertainment One, Alibaba Group's Alibaba Pictures and NBCUniversal/Comcast's Universal Pictures. Films produced by Amblin Partners are mostly distributed by Universal in North America and select international territories and by third-party distributors through Mister Smith Entertainment in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
History
Amblin Partners was founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeff Skoll of Participant Media, Anil Ambani of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and Darren Throop of Entertainment One on December 16, 2015. The company will primarily focus on producing and distributing films and television using the DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment and Participant Media brands.[6] For films, it uses the original DreamWorks label for mature content, Amblin label for family-friendly content, and Participant label for social justice content, although the latter remains a separate company.
On the same day as the company's formation, Amblin Partners announced that it entered into a five-year distribution deal with Universal Pictures by which the films would be distributed and marketed by either the main Universal banner or its specialty label, Focus Features. The Girl on the Train was the first film released under the deal. Mister Smith Entertainment, which began its international distribution deal with DreamWorks in 2012, continues to handle distribution sales for Amblin Partners in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
On October 9, 2016, Amblin Partners struck a deal with China's Alibaba Pictures, in which Alibaba acquired a minority equity stake in the company and will handle marketing, distribution support and merchandising of Amblin Partners films in China in addition to co-financing Amblin and DreamWorks films worldwide. On February 15, 2017, Comcast's Universal acquired a minority stake in Amblin Partners, strengthening the relationship between Universal and Amblin.
In December 2017, Amblin Partners signed a music publishing deal with BMG Rights Management, covering music from its films and TV series.
On August 22, 2019, Hasbro announced that it would acquire Entertainment One for at least $4 billion. The acquisition was completed on December 30, 2019, resulting in the toy company inheriting eOne's stake in Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures. On May 5, 2020, Amblin renewed its deal with Nordisk Film. In November 2020, Amblin Partners renewed its distribution deal with Universal, which continues to be an equity stake holder. That same month however, Participant terminated its equity stake in Amblin Partners, ending its relationship with the company.
In June 2021, Amblin Partners inked a multi-year deal to produce "multiple new feature films per year" for Netflix.
