This Holiday Season Steven Spielberg and Don Bluth bring you a magical experience. A musical journey. And a story that will live in your heart forever.
A holiday event from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment.
Meet Fievel. In his search to find his family, he discovered America.


Release Date: November 21, 1986

Universal

Domestic Total Gross: $47,483,002

2016: $107,901,800


An American Tail is a 1986 American animated musical adventure drama film directed by Don Bluth and produced by Sullivan Bluth Studios and Amblin Entertainment.[1] It tells the story of Fievel Mousekewitz and his family as they emigrate from Russia to the United States for freedom. However, he gets lost and must find a way to reunite with them. It was released on November 21, 1986, to reviews that ranged from positive to mixed and was a box office hit, making it the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film at the time. The success of it, The Land Before Time, and Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as well as Bluth's departure from their partnership, prompted Steven Spielberg to establish his own animation studio, Amblimation, which would later become DreamWorks Animation after several of Amblimation's films weren't as successful as Spielberg had hoped. The company was acquired by Universal's parent company NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion in April 2016


The film has grossed up to $47 million in the United States, also known as the domestic box office, and $84 million worldwide. At the time of its domestic release, it became the highest-grossing non-Disney produced animated feature at the time. It was also one of the first animated films to outdraw a Disney one, beating out The Great Mouse Detective (another traditionally animated film involving mice that was released in 1986 but four months earlier) by over US $22 million. However, while both animated films received positive reviews from various movie critics at the time of their respective releases, The Great Mouse Detective[17] was more successful in terms of receiving favorable reception from movie critics, most notably from Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert,[18][19] than An American Tail did.[20] Ironically, the modest success of The Great Mouse Detective would play a huge role in the Disney Renaissance;[21][22] due to the fact that it was both a critical and financial success, which helped Disney Animation Studios from going bankrupt after The Black Cauldron had flopped at the box office a year earlier. It would later be outgrossed by Bluth's next film, 1988's The Land Before Time, which marginally outperformed Oliver & Company. However, Oliver & Company did beat out The Land Before Time at the domestic box office by $5,000,000. The record would quickly be shattered with the release of The Little Mermaid, the film that many consider to be the start of the Disney Renaissance, three years later after the release of the film, beating out Don Bluth's own film, All Dogs Go to Heaven.