Claim: The Land Before Time is a film.

Sullivan Bluth Studios was an American and Irish animated film production company established in 1979 by animator Don Bluth . Bluth and several colleagues , all of whom were former Disney animators , left Disney in 1979 to form Don Bluth Productions , later known as the Bluth Group . This studio produced the short film Banjo the Woodpile Cat , the feature film The Secret of NIMH , a brief animation sequence in the musical Xanadu , and the video games Dragon 's Lair and Space Ace . The Bluth Group went bankrupt in 1984 , and Bluth co-founded Sullivan Bluth Studios with American businessman Morris Sullivan in 1985 .   The studio initially operated from an animation facility in Van Nuys , California , and negotiated with Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment to make the animated feature An American Tail . During its production , Sullivan began to move the studio to Dublin , Ireland , to take advantage of government investment and incentives offered by the Industrial Development Authority . Most of the staff from the US studio moved to the new Dublin facility during production on the studio 's second feature film , The Land Before Time . The studio also recruited heavily from Ireland , and helped set up an animation course at Ballyfermot Senior College to train new artists .   After The Land Before Time , the studio severed its connection with Amblin and negotiated with UK-based Goldcrest Films , which invested in and distributed two additional features , All Dogs Go to Heaven and Rock-a-Doodle . In 1989 , during the production of All Dogs Go to Heaven founding member John Pomeroy and many of the remaining US staff members returned to America to form a US wing in Burbank , California . The studio found itself in financial difficulty in 1992 when Goldcrest withdrew funding due to concerns about the poor box office returns of its most recent films and budgetary over-runs in its in-production films , Thumbelina , A Troll in Central Park and The Pebble and the Penguin . Another British film company , Merlin Films , and Hong Kong media company Media Assets invested in the studio to fund the completion and release of the three partially completed films .   Bluth and Gary Goldman were drawn away from the studio when they were approached in 1994 to set up a new animation studio for 20th Century Fox . Sullivan Bluth Studio 's films continued to suffer losses at the box office , and the studio was closed down in 1995 after the release of their final feature , The Pebble and the Penguin . Don Bluth and Gary Goldman went on to head up Fox Animation Studios in Phoenix , Arizona to work on Anastasia and Titan A.E.