Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Amblin' Man

Before sharks, aliens, and Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg's first movie in 1968 was a hippie love story called Amblin'. So when Spielberg founded his own production company in 1981 (along with super-producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall), he took the title from his very first film and combined it with one of the first films he produced—E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)—for the company's logo. With that, Amblin Entertainment was born.

Pretty much every big-budget summer blockbuster in the 90s, whether directed by Spielberg or merely Spielberg-esque, was produced by Amblin Entertainment, including all the Jurassic Park films, the Men in Black franchise, and a handful of disaster flicks like Twister (1996) and Deep Impact (1998). Basically, if it had big-name stars and big-ticket special effects, Spielberg was in on it. Amblin Entertainment is typically popcorn cinema, although it does occasionally diverge into more serious territory, like Spielberg's own Schindler's List (1991) or Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).

Jurassic Park is the pinnacle of popcorn entertainment. When a man has his own production company, he's in charge from beginning to end. Spielberg was dreaming up Jurassic Park while Michael Crichton was still working on the novel. Ah, the benefits of being your own boss.