{"id":589513,"date":"2025-11-23T21:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T21:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/589513\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T21:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T21:47:13","slug":"the-only-movie-that-steven-spielberg-disowned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/589513\/","title":{"rendered":"The only movie that Steven Spielberg disowned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Steven<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sun 23 November 2025 17:15, UK <\/p>\n

Not every director is guaranteed to make at least one movie during their career that they regret, but many have. Steven Spielberg<\/a> has made a few that didn\u2019t turn out the way he expected, but there\u2019s only one he\u2019s distanced himself from as far as possible in the years since he made it.<\/p>\n

The first folly of the legendary filmmaker\u2019s career was the ill-advised wartime comedy, 1941, which came at the wrong time. Flush from the success of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg\u2019s ego was in danger of running amok<\/a>, and he quickly learned that lesson after it became his first flop.<\/p>\n

He also rebounded by helming what might be his best-ever run of films, following it with the Indiana Jones trilogy, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, and Empire of the Sun, until Always ended his hot streak. After he enjoyed the best year of his career in 1993, when he had two seminal pictures released, he got two regrets for the price of one when he tried it again four years later.<\/p>\n

Spielberg admitted his heart was never really in the Jurassic Park sequel<\/a>, The Lost World, and Amistad was another disappointment that came hot on its heels. Hook is another movie that didn\u2019t turn out the way he expected, but he doesn\u2019t have the same kind of disdain for any of them that he does for his 1968 short, Amblin\u2019.<\/p>\n

Viewing it more as an exercise to prove himself<\/a> as a would-be auteur than a passion project, the three-time Academy Award winner lamented how the 26-minute effort has \u201cas much soul and content as a piece of driftwood,\u201d describing it as \u201ca great Pepsi commercial\u201d and little else.<\/p>\n

After buying himself out of the contract he signed with its producer, Denis C Hoffman, in 1977, Amblin\u2019 has become a collector\u2019s item. It\u2019s never been reissued, re-released, or remastered, never been made available on a major streaming service, and the only way to watch it is low-resolution copies on YouTube, because it\u2019s never been officially released on VHS or DVD, either.<\/p>\n

Allen Daviau, the cinematographer and frequent collaborator of Spielberg\u2019s, once explained that \u201cSteven was reluctant to have people see that film for many years,\u201d because he felt that \u201cit was so obviously calculated to do what it did, that is, convince a group of executives at Universal to put their money on this guy, who\u2019s a 21-year-old director.\u201d<\/p>\n

The E.T., Color Purple, and Empire of the Sun lenser, who also shot Amblin\u2019, thought \u201che was a little embarrassed by it,\u201d and Spielberg had already corroborated those thoughts by then. \u201cI can\u2019t look at it now,\u201d he said in 1978. \u201cIt really proved how apathetic I was during the \u201960s. Amblin\u2019 is the slick by-product of a kid immersed up to his nose in film.\u201d<\/p>\n

For whatever reason, despite the fact he\u2019s clearly not a fan of the short, Spielberg decided to name his production company after it anyway, which means that no matter how hard he may try and forget it, the title has been, and will continue, to follow him around wherever he goes for the rest of his days.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sun 23 November 2025 17:15, UK Not every director is guaranteed to make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,11820,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-589513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-steven-spielberg","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115601215441349997","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}