Amblin Partners Announces New Multi-Year Film Distribution Partnership With Universal Filmed Entertainment Group
1.12.2020 00:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Amblin Partners today announced a new multi-year film distribution partnership with Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, as well as a series of new agreements that chart a clear course for the next phase of growth for one of the world’s leading independent film and television studios. The new deals were announced this morning by Steven Spielberg, Amblin’s Founder and Chairman.
Remarked Spielberg: “My decades-long relationship with Universal truly transcends any single business deal, and to once again renew our corporate vows reaffirms that Universal is Amblin’s home. In addition to Universal, we are blessed to continue forward with a global family of partners, including Alibaba, eOne and Reliance, each of which has supported us for many years and enabled our storytelling to touch the lives of millions of moviegoers around the world. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to my dear friends Jeff Skoll and David Linde for an incredible run as formal partners; and my congratulations on what I know will be a successful next chapter in Participant’s journey. While in a different form, we look forward to continuing our collaborations to create the type of culturally-impactful content that only Participant can deliver.”
Donna Langley, Chairman, Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, said: “Steven Spielberg and Amblin Partners have delivered award-winning critical and commercial hits that stand the test of time amongst films in the Universal canon. We’re proud to continue our partnership and reinvest in the future of Amblin Partners.”
Amblin’s continuing partnership with Universal Filmed Entertainment Group builds on a long history between the two companies, dating back to Spielberg’s arrival on the Universal lot as an intern in 1968. The new agreement further evolves the entities’ 2015 agreement that resulted in a number of critical and commercial hits, most recently Oscar Best Picture Winner Green Book, and 1917, which won three Oscars, two Golden Globes and grossed more than $385 million at the worldwide box office.
The new deal calls for multiple Amblin films to be marketed and distributed theatrically via Universal Pictures and Focus Features each year, while also providing Amblin with new opportunities in the streaming film marketplace. NBCUniversal has also agreed to re-invest in the Company, continuing its position as an equity holder and providing fresh capital to fund new production and development efforts across the Company’s film and television businesses.
Jeff Small, Amblin Partners CEO, commented: “Universal is simply the best in the business, and we are beyond fortunate to have Donna Langley and her team supporting our films. In addition, the evolution of our partnership provides flexibility for us to continue supplying the fast-growing streaming marketplace on an even greater scale, which will no doubt be a key growth driver for Amblin Partners in both film and TV in the years ahead.”
Alibaba Pictures, eOne and Reliance Entertainment will all continue as equity holders, with Alibaba releasing Amblin films in China; eOne releasing in the U.K., Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Benelux; and Reliance releasing in India.
Participant, which as a founding partner played a key role in the formation of Amblin Partners in 2015, will now exit its role as an equity holder of the Company. This transition will allow Participant flexibility with respect to distribution of its films, while still keeping open opportunities to work together with Amblin on future projects.
“We have enjoyed our relationship with Amblin Partners and are proud of the many notable films we have produced together,” stated Participant CEO David Linde. “Exiting our formal position will allow us the flexibility to evolve our business as our strategic goals and the marketplace dictates. Both Universal and Focus have been great distribution partners; and we have been incredibly fortunate to work closely with Steven, well pre-dating the formation of Amblin Partners, and look forward to finding new projects with him, Jeff Small and the entire Amblin team.”
Amblin also announced the close of an amended and restated syndicated revolving credit facility led by J.P. Morgan and Comerica. The facility continues longstanding relationships with a number of additional banking partners, and in total includes City National Bank, Union Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, Bank Hapoalim, CIT Bank, East West Bank, Fifth Third Bank, California Bank & Trust, Citizens Bank and Preferred Bank. The facility will fund ongoing corporate operations, as well as production and development activities for both film and television.
“For nearly three decades, J.P. Morgan has had the pleasure of working with Amblin through its many significant achievements and milestones,” said David Shaheen, Head of the West Region and Entertainment Industries Group for J.P. Morgan’s Corporate Client Banking business. “We are proud to support the ambitious and creative Amblin team as they write the next chapter of their impressive story.”
About Amblin Partners
Amblin Partners is a film and television production company, led by Steven Spielberg, that develops and produces films using the Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures banners, and includes Amblin Television. The Company’s investment partners include Reliance Entertainment, Entertainment One (eOne), Alibaba Pictures and Universal Pictures.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201130005872/en/
Contact information
Dan Berger
+1 818-733-9645
dberger@amblinpartners.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands21.10.2026 20:15:00 EEST | Press release
Octane AI, the quiz and zero-party data platform for Shopify brands, launched Phoenix in October, its biggest release to date. Merchants describe the quiz they want or upload what they already have, and Phoenix builds it, checks it, personalizes the results and keeps improving it with experiments. One beta customer turned a single document into a complete product-launch quiz: “I attached it to Phoenix, and it built the whole thing, all the pages. It understood everything, not just the text but the logic behind it.” Across all live Octane AI quizzes, 15% of shoppers who finish a quiz place an order. Yet building one has meant hours of writing rules by hand, custom code for design and clicking through every path to find broken results. Phoenix handles those hard parts, from building a quiz to improving it after launch. “Since day one, we've kept track of every piece of feedback from our merchants: what frustrates them and what they wish Octane AI could do. Phoenix is the result, and it k
Cognite Earns Corporate Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon Petroleum Corporation21.10.2026 20:06:00 EEST | Press release
Cognite today announced it has been named Corporate Supplier of the Year winner in Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s 11th Annual Supplier Recognition Awards. The Supplier Recognition Awards is a program sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corporation to honor suppliers that positively impacted the company’s business throughout the previous calendar year. “There’s a reason ‘Impact’ is one of Cognite’s most important core values,” said Girish Rishi, CEO of Cognite. “For us, the ultimate measure of our performance is delivering quantifiable value for our customers. From that perspective, the Corporate Supplier of the Year award from Marathon is particularly meaningful. Marathon Petroleum is an innovator, and to receive this recognition is a great honor to the Cognite community.” The Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon is the latest honor Cognite has received in 2026: In May, Cognite ranked 15th on CNBC’s Disruptor50 list, honoring venture-backed companies innovating across industries, exp
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. to Webcast Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion Presentations on November 4, 202621.10.2026 19:48:00 EEST | Press release
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) today announced that it will webcast presentations from its Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. The event will feature presentations from Stéphane de La Faverie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as members of the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and local leaders. The presentations will highlight the Company’s strategy and capabilities in China, Beauty Reimagined in action, and how China serves as a blueprint for deploying the Company’s global capabilities to drive sustainable growth and stronger profitability. Due to limited capacity, in-person attendance is by invitation only. Interested parties can access the live webcast on Wednesday, November 4th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. China Standard Time (12:00 a.m. ET) at Investors – The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. A replay of the webcast wi
Future Health and Bridge for Billions to Launch Programme Strengthening Health Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets21.10.2026 18:50:00 EEST | Press release
Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi and Bridge for Billions will launch a new entrepreneurship programme designed to strengthen promising health ventures in emerging markets and help locally-developed solutions reach more people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261021719421/en/ The first phase of the programme will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incubation to early-acceleration ventures in Africa and Asia. Emerging markets are home to significant health needs and entrepreneurial potential, yet many promising ventures can struggle to access the capital, specialist guidance, and health-system connections required to grow. WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2024 reported that Latin America and Africa together accounted for around 3% of global venture-capital deals in the first half of 2024, while venture-capital values fell by 19% in Asia-Pacific and 80% in Africa. At the same time, entrepre
Hephaestus Exits Stealth Having Raised $17.2M to Supply Rare-Earth-Free HTS Superconductors and Build Low-Cost Fusion Power21.10.2026 17:48:00 EEST | Press release
Hephaestus today emerged from stealth with solutions that address two of the largest cost drivers in fusion power: the high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and the edge-localized modes (ELMs – major plasma instabilities) that drive up the cost and complexity of conventional reactor designs. The company also announced the close of a new funding round led by CiRi Ventures. Hephaestus was founded in London in 2019 with a single mission – to help make fusion energy cheap enough to compete on the grid. Its AI plasma solver initially swept the full space of tokamak design parameters, unconstrained by the legacy designs and materials much of the industry is already committed to, and identified negative triangularity (NT), which inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, as the most likely configuration for low-cost fusion energy. Subsequent results from facilities worldwide, including the DIII-D, JET, and SMART, have shown that NT can deliver strong
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom