Nested in a back lot at Universal Studios, Amblin Entertainment is producer/director Steven Spielberg\'s movie production company. Soon to be folded into Spielberg\'s new DreamWorks SKG Studio, a joint venture with partners David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Amblin also produces television shows. Amblin\'s staff is responsible for promotions, merchandising, licensing, and product placement, in addition to producing Steven Spielberg\'s movie projects. Unlike in-house promotion departments at major studios, Amblin acts in partnership with distributors including Paramount, Warner Bros., Universal, and Disney, who work with Spielberg on individual projects. Known for its blockbuster films, Amblin is also a leader in the field of marketing and promotions. The company\'s merchandising and licensing team, headed by Brad Globe and Mark Levy, are known for their industry firsts and partnerships with promotional tie-ins. Beginnings at Universal Named after Steven Spielberg\'s student film Amblin\', the production company was founded in 1984. Its headquarters was built at Universal Studios, which cost the studio more than $3 million in addition to employee salaries (which are all carried by Universal). The company\'s name represents a major launching point in Spielberg\'s career. Amblin\' was a 23-minute documentary Spielberg made in film school. Spielberg had bad grades and was not able to attend the top film schools, but managed acceptance at California State University, Long Beach, where he made Amblin\'. After seeing the film, Sidney Sheinberg, Universal\'s television director and later president of Universal\'s parent company MCA, offered the 20-year-old Spielberg a seven-year contract to make Universal television shows at $275 a week. When he directed Jaws for Universal a few years later, Spielberg received five percent of the profits, putting an end to his days of working for a salary, with about $5 million in income. Surrounding himself with people who were first creative and then businesslike, Spielberg still left much of the business to his employees, leaving his time free for movie making. Not to say that Spielberg\'s involvement with Amblin projects was hands-off; on the contrary, he was involved with every aspect of film promotions, editing trailers and overseeing marketing tie-in schemes. During the ten months when Amblin\'s offices were under construction, Spielberg spent three days a week overseeing the process. Amblin\'s Southwestern architectural design was lavish, with art departments illuminated by skylights, a video arcade, and a courtyard with fruit and vegetable gardens and a swimming pool. Spielberg\'s personal touches pervaded the headquarters, with a tiny \"Jaws\"-like shark in the wishing well and a candy counter in the screening room. Amblin is notorious for its atmosphere of secrecy. According to the Los Angeles Times, Amblin workers are required to sign lifelong confidentiality agreements. The company\'s security staff quickly turns away those who linger too close to the building. Such ironclad security is ironic in light of Steven Spielberg\'s own start in the movie business. In the 1960s, when Spielberg was a teenager, he took a tour of Universal Studios. The next day he returned in a business suit and made himself at home in a vacant office, which he happily occupied until he was discovered and asked to leave. Only a few years later, Sidney Sheinberg saw his film, Amblin\', and shortly after that Spielberg directed five films for Universal. The movie business declined by approximately ten percent in 1985, perhaps because of the boom in video rentals and neighborhood rental shops. In 1985, Steven Spielberg stepped out of the director\'s chair to manage the administrative development of his young company. It was a year of great successes and massive failures, as Amblin tried its hand at varied film and television projects. High-grossing films released by Amblin featured directors hired by Spielberg, such as Richard Donner (The Goonies) and Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future). Less successful was Spielberg\'s television venture, \"Amazing Stories.\" In 1985, NBC ordered 44 episodes (two years\' worth) of this new series without ever seeing a script, in a deal valued at $750,000. With \"Amazing Stories,\" NBC hoped to race ahead of the show \"Murder She Wrote\" in the ratings. Spielberg hired Hollywood\'s best-known filmmakers to develop the series, which involved tales of horror, humor, and weirdness. \"Amazing Stories\" would not fulfill NBC\'s hopes, however. The show slid quickly in the ratings, with its premiere episode drawing one-third of the night\'s viewing audience, and its succeeding episodes dropping to one-fifth of the viewing audience only one month later. NBC canceled the program in its second season. Other unsuccessful Amblin projects in 1985 included the films Explorers and Young Sherlock Holmes for Paramount and Fandango for Warner Bros. The Money Pit, made for Universal and directed by Richard Benjamin, was sent back to the director for reediting and additional shooting.