1969–1974: On the horizon

Spielberg made his professional debut with "Eyes", a segment of Night Gallery (1969) scripted by Rod Serling and starring Joan Crawford.^[68] Initially, there was skepticism from Crawford and studio executives regarding Spielberg's inexperience. Despite Spielberg's efforts to implement advanced camerawork techniques, studio executives demanded a more straightforward approach. His initial contributions received mixed responses, leading Spielberg to briefly step back from studio work.^[69] Crawford, reflecting on her collaboration with Spielberg, recognized his potential, noting his unique intuitive inspiration. She expressed her appreciation for Spielberg's talent in a note to him and also communicated her approval to Serling. Crawford's endorsement highlighted Spielberg's early recognition in Hollywood despite initial hesitations regarding his experience.^[70]

In the early 1970s, Spielberg unsuccessfully tried to raise financing for his own low-budget films. He co-wrote and directed teleplays for Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game, Columbo, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist.^[71] Although unsatisfied with his work,^[72] Spielberg used the opportunity to experiment with his techniques and learn about filmmaking. He earned good reviews and impressed producers; he was earning a steady income and relocated to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.^[71]

Impressed, Universal signed Spielberg to do four television films.^[73] The first was Duel (1971), adapted from Richard Matheson's short story of the same name, about a salesman (Dennis Weaver) being chased down a highway by a psychotic tanker truck driver. Impressed, executives decided to promote the film on television. Reviews were positive, and Universal asked Spielberg to shoot more scenes so that Duel could be released to international markets.^[74] "Deservedly so" writes David Thomson, "for it stands up as one of the medium's most compelling spirals of suspense. The ordinariness of the Dennis Weaver character and the monstrous malignance of the truck confront one another with a narrative assurance that never needs to remind us of the element of fable."^[75] More TV films followed: Something Evil (1972) and Savage (1973).

Spielberg made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), based on a true story about a married couple on the run, desperate to regain custody of their baby from foster parents.^[76] The film starred Goldie Hawn and William Atherton and marked the first of many collaborations with the composer John Williams.^[77] Although the film was awarded Best Screenplay at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, it was not a commercial success,^[77]^[78] which Spielberg blamed on Universal's inconsistent marketing.^[79] The film opened in four hundred theaters in the U.S. to positive reviews; Pauline Kael wrote "Spielberg uses his gifts in a very free-and-easy, American way—for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors, a born entertainer—perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks."^[80] The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "a major new director is on the horizon."^[81]

1975–1980: Magician

Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown took a chance with Spielberg, giving him the opportunity to direct Jaws (1975), a thriller based on Peter Benchley's bestseller. In it, a great white shark attacks beachgoers at a summer resort town, prompting police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) to hunt it down with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a veteran shark hunter (Robert Shaw). Jaws was the first movie shot on open ocean,^[82] so shooting proved difficult, especially when the mechanical shark malfunctioned. The shooting schedule overran by a hundred days, and Universal threatened to cancel production.^[83] Against expectations, Jaws was a success, setting the domestic box office record and making Spielberg a household name.^[84] It won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Best Original Dramatic Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter). Spielberg said the malfunctioning of the mechanical shark resulted in a better movie, as he had to find other ways to suggest the shark's presence. Thomson writes "like Coppola on The Godfather, Spielberg asserted his own role and deftly organized the elements into a roller coaster entertainment without sacrificing inner meanings. The suspense of the picture came from meticulous technique and good humor about its own surgical cutting. You have only to submit to the travesty of Jaws 2 to realize how much more engagingly Spielberg saw the ocean, the perils, the sinister beauty of the shark, and the vitality of its human opponents."^[75] After seeing the unconventional camera techniques of Jaws, Alfred Hitchcock praised "young Spielberg" for thinking outside the visual dynamics of the theater: "He's the first one of us who doesn't see the proscenium arch".^[85]

After declining an offer to make Jaws 2^[86] Spielberg and Dreyfuss reunited to work on a film about UFOs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Spielberg used 65 mm film for the best picture quality, and a new live-action recording system so that the recordings could be duplicated later.^[87]^[88] He cast one of his favorite directors, François Truffaut, as the scientist Claude Lacombe and worked with special effects expert Douglas Trumbull. One of the rare films both written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters was very popular with film-goers,^[89] and he received his first Best Director nomination from the Academy Awards. It earned six more nominations, winning Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and Best Sound Effects Editing (Frank Warner).^[90] Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "I saw Close Encounters at its first public showing in New York, and most of the audience stayed on and on to watch the credits crawl lengthily at the end. For one thing, under the credits the giant spaceship was returning to the stars. For another, they just didn’t want to leave this picture. For still another, they seemed to understand the importance of those many names to what they had just seen." Kauffmann placed it first on his list of the best American films from 1968 to 1977.^[91] Reviewing Close Encounters, Kael called Spielberg "a magician in the age of movies."^[92]

His next directorial work was 1941 (1979), an action-comedy written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale about Californians preparing for a Japanese invasion after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Spielberg was self-conscious about doing comedy as he had no prior experience in the genre.^[93] Universal and Columbia agreed to co-finance the film. 1941 grossed over $92.4 million worldwide upon release,^[94] but most critics, and the studio heads, disliked it.^[93] Charles Champlin described 1941 as "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill, which it somewhat resembles."^[95] Stanley Kubrick supposedly said that the film was "great, but not funny."^[96]

1981–1990: Impresario

He directed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. They considered it an homage to the serials of the 1930s and 1940s.^[97] It starred Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood. Filmed in La Rochelle, Hawaii, Tunisia and Elstree Studios, England, the shoot was difficult but Spielberg said that it helped him hone his business acumen.^[98] The film was a box office success^[99] and won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction (Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley and Michael D. Ford); Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn); Best Sound (Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker and Roy Charman); Best Sound Editing (Ben Burtt and Richard L. Anderson); and Best Visual Effects (Richard Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson and Joe Johnston).^[100] Roger Ebert wrote that "Raiders of the Lost Ark is an out-of-body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and breakneck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later–breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face... For locations, it ticks off the jungles of South America, the hinterlands of Tibet, the deserts of Egypt, a hidden submarine base, an isolated island, a forgotten tomb–no, make that two forgotten tombs–and an American archaeology classroom. For villains, it has sadistic Nazis, slimy gravediggers, drunken Sherpas, and scheming Frenchmen. For threats, it climaxes with the wrath of God, and leads up to that spectacular development by easy stages, with tarantulas, runaway boulders, hidden spears, falling rock slabs, burning airplanes, runaway trucks, sealed tombs, and snakes. Lots of snakes."^[101] Raiders was the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise.

Spielberg returned to science fiction with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). It tells the story of Elliot (Henry Thomas), a young boy who befriends an alien who was accidentally left behind by his companions and is attempting to return home. Spielberg eschewed storyboards so that his direction would be more spontaneous, and shot roughly in sequence so that the actors' performances would be authentic as they bonded with and said goodbye to E.T. Richard Corliss recalled: "This was the closing-night attraction at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, a venue not known for blubbering sentiment. At the end, as the little critter bade his farewells and the Jules Verne-like space ship left the ground, the audience similarly levitated. One heard the audience’s childlike applause; one felt their spirits lift. This was rapture made audible, palpable ... Screenwriter Melissa Mathison lent a fairy-tale clarity to the director’s standard plot of a lost boy seeking his way back home. And Spielberg orchestrated the movements of the camera and the puppet spaceman with the feelings of—it has to be called love—expressed in young Henry Thomas’ yearning face. E.T. was the first film character to be a finalist in TIME’s Man of the Year sweepstakes. It would have been fine with me if the little creature, this lovely film, had won."^[102] A special screening was organized for Ronald and Nancy Reagan, who were emotional by the end.^[103] E.T. grossed $700 million worldwide.^[103] It won four Academy Awards: Best Original Score (John Williams), Best Sound (Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don Digirolamo and Gene Cantamessa), Best Sound Editing (Charles L. Campbell and Ben Burtt) and Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Dennis Muren and Kenneth F. Smith).^[104] Kael wrote of E.T.: "His voice is ancient and otherworldly but friendly, humorous. And this scaly, wrinkled little man with huge, wide-apart, soulful eyes and a jack-in-the-box neck has been so fully created that he's a friend to us, too; when he speaks of his longing to go home the audience becomes as mournful as Elliot. Spielberg has earned the tears that some people in the audience—and not just children—shed. The tears are tokens of gratitude for the spell the picture has put on the audience. Genuinely entrancing movies are almost as rare as extraterrestrial visitors."^[105] Spielberg co-wrote and produced Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982), released the same summer as E.T.^[99] With John Landis, he co-produced the anthology film Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), contributing the "Kick the Can" segment.^[106]

His next feature film was the Raiders of the Lost Ark prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Working again with Lucas and Ford, the film was shot in the United States, Sri Lanka and China.^[107] The film was darker than its predecessor, and led to the creation of the PG-13 rating because some content was deemed unsuitable for children under 13.^[108] Spielberg later said that he was unhappy with Temple of Doom because it lacked his "personal touches and love".^[109] Nonetheless, the film was a blockbuster hit,^[110] won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects and received mostly good reviews.^[109] Kael preferred it to the original, writing: "Spielberg is like a magician whose tricks are so daring they make you laugh. He creates an atmosphere of happy disbelief: the more breathtaking and exhilarating the stunts are the funnier they are. Nobody has ever fused thrills and laughter in quite the way that he does here. He starts off at full charge in the opening sequence and just keeps going." She conceded that it was less "sincere" than Raiders, adding "that's what is so good about it."^[111] On this project Spielberg met his future wife, Kate Capshaw, who played Willie Scott.^[112] Spielberg recalled, "The second film I could have done a lot better if there had been a different story. It was a good learning exercise for me to really throw myself into a black hole. I came out of the darkness of Temple Of Doom and I entered the light of the woman I was eventually going to marry and raise a family with."^[113]

Thomson writes that "At first sight, the Spielberg of the eighties may seem more an impresario—or a studio, even—then a director."^[75] Between 1984 and 1990, Spielberg served as either producer or executive producer on nineteen feature films,^[114] among them Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985), The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988), Joe Versus the Volcano (John Patrick Shanley, 1990) and Arachnophobia (Frank Marshall, 1990).^[115]^[116]^[117] For some, including Young Sherlock Holmes (Barry Levinson, 1985) and Harry and the Hendersons (William Dear, 1987), the title "Steven Spielberg Presents" was in the opening credits.^[118] Much of Spielberg's producing work was aimed at children and teens, including cartoons such as Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid! and Family Dog.^[119] Spielberg also produced Don Bluth's animated features An American Tail and The Land Before Time.^[116] In 1985, NBC offered Spielberg a two-year contract on a television series, Amazing Stories; the show was marketed as a blend of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. NBC gave Spielberg creative control and a budget of $1 million for each episode.^[120] After two seasons and disappointing ratings, the show was not renewed.^[121] Although Spielberg's involvement as a producer would vary widely from project to project, Zemeckis said that Spielberg would always "respect the filmmaker's vision".^[122] Over the next decade, Spielberg's record as a producer brought mixed critical and commercial results.^[122] In 1992, Spielberg began to scale back producing, saying "Producing has been the least fulfilling aspect of what I've done in the last decade."^[123]

In the early 1980s, Spielberg befriended Warner Communications CEO Steve Ross eventually resulting in Spielberg making films for Warner Bros.^[124] It began with The Color Purple (1985), an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, about a generation of empowered African-American women during depression-era America. It was Spielberg's first film on a dramatic subject matter, and he expressed reservations about tackling the project: "It's the risk of being judged-and accused of not having the sensibility to do character studies."^[125] Starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, the film was a box office hit and critics started to take note of Spielberg's foray into drama.^[125] Ebert named it the best film of the year.^[126] The film also received eleven Academy Award nominations, and Spielberg won Best Director from the Directors Guild of America.^[125] The film was produced and scored by Quincy Jones.

As China underwent economic reform and opened up to the American film industry, Spielberg made Empire of the Sun (1987), the first American film shot in Shanghai since the 1930s.^[127] It is an adaptation of J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel of the same name about Jamie Graham (Christian Bale), a young boy who goes from being the son of a wealthy British family in Shanghai to a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. It was written by playwright Tom Stoppard and co-starred John Malkovich as an American expatriate. Critical reaction was mixed at the time of release; criticism ranged from the "overwrought" plot to Spielberg's downplaying of "disease and starvation".^[128]^[129] However, Andrew Sarris named it the best film of the year and later included it among the best of the decade.^[130] The film was nominated for six Academy Awards,^[131] but was a disappointment at the box office; Ian Alterman of The New York Times thought it was overlooked by audiences.^[132] Spielberg recalled that Empire of the Sun was one of his most enjoyable films to make.^[133] Thomson called it "a great work through and through. It received few Oscar nominations, but for anyone with a sense of film I think it was the first clear sign that Spielberg the showman was an artist, too."^[134]

After directing The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, Spielberg intended to direct Rain Man, but instead directed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) to meet his contractual obligations.^[135] Producer Lucas and star Ford returned for the film. A longtime James Bond fan, Spielberg cast Sean Connery as Jones's father, Henry Jones, Sr.^[133] Due to complaints about violence in Temple of Doom, Spielberg returned to more family-friendly fare for the third installment.^[136] Last Crusade received mostly positive reviews and was a box office success, earning $474 million; it was his biggest hit since E.T.^[137] Biographer Joseph McBride wrote that it was a comeback for Spielberg, and Spielberg acknowledged the amount he has learned from making the Indiana Jones series.^[137] Ebert wrote that "If there is just a shade of disappointment after seeing this movie, it has to be because we will never again have the shock of this material seeming new. Raiders of the Lost Ark, now more than ever, seems a turning point in the cinema of escapist entertainment, and there was really no way Spielberg could make it new all over again. What he has done is to take many of the same elements, and apply all of his craft and sense of fun to make them work yet once again. And they do."^[138]

Also in 1989, he reunited with Richard Dreyfuss for the romantic drama Always, about an aerial firefighter. It is a modern remake of one of Spielberg's favorite childhood films, A Guy Named Joe (1943). The story was personal; he said "As a child I was very frustrated, and maybe I saw my own parents [in A Guy Named Joe]. I was also short of girlfriends. And it stuck with me."^[139] Spielberg had discussed the film with Dreyfuss back in 1975, with up to twelve drafts being written before filming commenced.^[136] Always was commercially unsuccessful and received mixed reviews.^[140]^[136] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "Always is filled with big, sentimental moments, it lacks the intimacy to make any of this very moving."^[141]

1991–1998: Oscar winner

After a brief setback in which Spielberg felt "artistically stalled",^[142] he returned in 1991 with Hook, about a middle-aged Peter Pan (Robin Williams), who returns to Neverland and encounters Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts) and the eponymous Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). During filming, the stars clashed on set; Spielberg told 60 Minutes that he would never work with Roberts again.^[143] Nominated for five Academy Awards, the studio enjoyed the film but most critics did not; Thomson called it "maudlin."^[75] Writing for The Washington Post, Desson Howe described the film as "too industrially organized", and thought it mundane.^[144] At the box office, it earned over $300 million worldwide from a $70 million budget.^[145] In 1993, Spielberg served as an executive producer for the NBC science fiction series seaQuest DSV;^[146] the show was not a hit.^[114] In 1994, he found success producing the medical drama ER.^[146]

In 1993, Spielberg returned to the adventure genre with Jurassic Park, based on the 1990 bestseller by Michael Crichton (creator of ER), with a screenplay by Crichton and David Koepp. Jurassic Park is set on a fictional island near Costa Rica, where a businessman (Richard Attenborough) has hired a team of geneticists to create a wildlife park of de-extinct dinosaurs. In a departure from his usual order of planning, Spielberg and the designers storyboarded certain sequences from the novel early on.^[147] The film also used computer-generated imagery provided by Industrial Light & Magic; Jurassic Park was completed on time and became the highest-grossing film at the time, and won three Academy Awards.^[148] The film's dominance during its theatrical run, as well as Spielberg's $250 million salary, made him self-conscious of his own success.^[149]

Also in 1993, Spielberg directed Schindler's List, about Oskar Schindler, a businessman who helped save 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust.^[150] Based on Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally, Spielberg waited ten years to make the film as he did not feel "mature" enough.^[151] He wanted to embrace his heritage,^[152]^[153] and after the birth of his son, Max, he said that "it greatly affected me [...] A spirit began to ignite in me, and I became a Jewish dad".^[154] Filming commenced on March 1, 1993, in Poland, while Spielberg was still editing Jurassic Park in the evenings.^[155] To make filming "bearable", Spielberg brought his wife and children with him.^[156] Against expectations, the film was a commercial success, and Spielberg used his percentage of profits to start the Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organization that archives testimonies of Holocaust survivors.^[157] Schindler's List won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Spielberg's first as Best Director.^[158] It also won seven BAFTAs, and three Golden Globes.^[159]^[160] Schindler's List is one of the American Film Institute's 100 best American films ever made.^[161] While Schindler's List was praised by most critics, some reviewers, including filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, criticized the film for its weak representation of the Holocaust.^[162] Imre Kertész, a Hungarian author and concentration camp survivor, also disliked the film, saying, "I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life and the very possibility of the Holocaust."^[163] Thomson calls it "the most moving film I have ever seen."^[75]

In 1994, Spielberg took a break from directing to spend more time with his family, and set up his new film studio, DreamWorks, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.^[164]^[157] Spielberg cited more creative control and distribution improvements as the main reasons for founding his own studio;^[165] he and his partners compared themselves to the founders of United Artists in 1919.^[166] DreamWorks' investors included Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates.^[167] After founding DreamWorks, Spielberg continued to operate Amblin Entertainment and direct films for other studios.^[168] Besides film, Spielberg helped design a Jurassic Park-themed attraction at Universal Orlando in Florida.^[169] The workload of filmmaking and operating a studio raised questions about his commitments, but Spielberg maintained that "this is all fitting nicely into my life and I'm still home by six and I'm still home on the weekends."^[170]

After his hiatus, he returned to directing with a sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). A loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel The Lost World, the plot follows mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his researchers who study dinosaurs at Jurassic Park which is on an island and are confronted by another team with a different agenda. Spielberg wanted the onscreen creatures to be more realistic than in the first film; he used 3D storyboards, computer imagery and robotic puppets.^[171] Budgeted at $73 million,^[172] The Lost World: Jurassic Park opened in May 1997 and was one of the highest grossing films of the year.^[173] The Village Voice critic opined that The Lost World was "better crafted but less fun" than the first film, while The Guardian wrote "It looks like a director on autopilot [...] The special effects brook no argument."^[173]

His 1997 feature Amistad his first released under DreamWorks, was based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad. Producer Debbie Allen, who had read the book Amistad I in 1978, thought Spielberg would be perfect to direct.^[174] Spielberg was hesitant taking on the project, afraid that it would be compared to Schindler's List, but he said, "I've never planned my career [...] In the end I do what I think I gotta do."^[174] Starring Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou and Matthew McConaughey, Spielberg used Allen's ten years worth of research to reenact the difficult historical scenes.^[172]^[175] The film struggled to find an audience, and underperformed at the box office;^[176] Spielberg admitted that "[Amistad] became too much of a history lesson."^[177]

Spielberg's 1998 release was World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, about a group of U.S. soldiers led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) sent to bring home a paratrooper whose three older brothers were killed in the same twenty-four hours of the Normandy landing. Filming took place in England, and U.S. Marine Dale Dye was hired to train the actors and keep them in character during the combat scenes. Halfway through filming, Spielberg reminded the cast that they were making a tribute to thank "your grandparents and my dad, who fought in [the war]".^[178] Upon release, critics praised the direction and its realistic portrayal of war.^[179] The film grossed a successful $481 million worldwide^[180] and Spielberg won a second Academy Award for Best Director.^[181] In August 1999, Spielberg and Hanks were awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal from Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen.^[178]^[182] Thomson writes "Ryan changed war films: combat, shock, wounds, and fear had never been so graphically presented; and yet there was also a true sense of what duties and ideas had felt like in 1944. I disliked the framing device. I would have admired a director who trusted us to get there without that. Never mind—Ryan is a magnificent film."^[75] Ebert wrote "Spielberg knows how to make audiences weep better than any director since Chaplin in City Lights. But weeping is an incomplete response, letting the audience off the hook. This film embodies ideas. After the immediate experience begins to fade, the implications remain and grow."^[183]

1999–2012: Master of technology

Spielberg and Hanks produced Band of Brothers (2001), a ten-part HBO miniseries based on Stephen E. Ambrose's book of the same name.^[181] It follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division's 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. It won a Golden Globe for Best Miniseries.^[184] Spielberg returned to science fiction with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a loose adaptation of Brian Aldiss's 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long". Stanley Kubrick had first asked Spielberg to direct the feature in 1979. Spielberg tried to make it in the style that Kubrick would have,^[185] though with mixed results according to some critics.^[186] The plot revolves around an android, David (Haley Joel Osment) who, like Pinocchio, dreams of being a "real boy". Critics thought Spielberg directed with "sentimentality",^[187] and Ebert wrote, "Here is one of the most ambitious films of recent years [...] but it miscalculates in asking us to invest our emotions in a character, a machine."^[188] The film won five Saturn Awards^[187] and grossed $236 million worldwide.^[189] Jonathan Rosenbaum highly praised the film: "If the best movies are often those that change the rules, Steven Spielberg’s sincere, cockeyed, serious, and sometimes masterful realization of Stanley Kubrick’s ambitious late project deserves to be a contender... If A.I. Artificial Intelligence—a film whose split personality is apparent even in its two-part title—is as much a Kubrick movie as a Spielberg one, this is in large part because it defamiliarizes Spielberg, makes him strange. Yet it also defamiliarizes Kubrick, with equally ambiguous results—making his unfamiliarity familiar. Both filmmakers should be credited for the results—Kubrick for proposing that Spielberg direct the project and Spielberg for doing his utmost to respect Kubrick’s intentions while making it a profoundly personal work."^[190] A. O. Scott called it "the best fairy tale–the most disturbing, complex and intellectually challenging boy's adventure story–Mr. Spielberg has made" and chose it as the best film of the year.^[191]

Spielberg followed A.I. with the sci-fi neo-noir Minority Report (2002), based on Philip K. Dick's short story of the same name about a group of investigators who try to prevent crimes before they are committed. The film received critical acclaim. Ebert named Minority Report the best film of 2002, praising its craftsmanship: "here is Spielberg using every trick in the book and matching them without seams, so that no matter how he's achieving his effects, the focus is always on the story and the characters... Some directors place their trust in technology. Spielberg, who is a master of technology, trusts only story and character, and then uses everything else as a workman uses his tools."^[192] However, critic Todd McCarthy thought there was not enough action.^[193] The film earned over $358 million worldwide.^[194] Also in 2002, he released Catch Me If You Can, based on the autobiography of con-artist Frank Abagnale. Leonardo DiCaprio played Abangale; Christopher Walken and Hanks also starred. Spielberg said, "I have always loved movies about sensational rogues—they break the law, but you just have to love them for the moxie."^[195] The film was a critical and commercial success.^[196]

Spielberg worked with Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci in The Terminal (2004), a lighthearted comedy about an Eastern European man stranded in an airport. The film was praised for its production design and was a commercial success, although reviews were mixed.^[197] In 2005, Spielberg directed War of the Worlds, a co-production of Paramount and DreamWorks, based on H. G. Wells's novel of the same name; Spielberg had been a fan of the book and of George Pal's 1953 film.^[198] Starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, the film is about an American dock worker who is forced to look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he tries to protect and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade Earth. Spielberg used storyboards to help the actors react to computer imagery that they could not see and used natural lighting and camerawork to avoid an "over stylized" science fiction picture.^[199] The film was a box office hit grossing over $600 million worldwide.^[200]

Spielberg's Munich (2005) is about the Israeli government's secret retaliation after eleven Israeli Olympic athletes were kidnapped and murdered in the 1972 Munich massacre. The film is based on Vengeance, a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas.^[201] It was previously adapted for the screen in the 1986 television film Sword of Gideon. Spielberg, who personally remembers the incident, sought advice from former president Bill Clinton, among others, before making the film because he did not want to cause further problems in the Middle East.^[201] Although the film garnered mostly positive reviews, some critics perceived it as anti-Semitic;^[202] it is one of Spielberg's most controversial films to date.^[203] Munich received five Academy Awards nominations: Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director for Spielberg. It was his sixth Best Director nomination, and fifth Best Picture nomination.^[204]^[205]

Thumb — Spielberg with Bill Clinton, 2009

In the mid-2000s, Spielberg scaled down his directing career and became more selective about film projects to undertake.^[206] In December 2005, he and his partners sold DreamWorks to media conglomerate Viacom (now known as Paramount Global). The sale was finalized in February 2006.^[205] In June 2006, Spielberg planned to make Interstellar, but abandoned the project, which was eventually directed by Christopher Nolan.^[207] During this period, Spielberg remained active as a producer; producing 2005's Memoirs of a Geisha, an adaptation of Arthur Golden's novel of the same name.^[208] Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis executive-produced the animated film Monster House (2006), marking their eighth collaboration. He also worked with Clint Eastwood for the first time, co-producing 2006's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima with Robert Lorenz. Spielberg served as executive producer for 2007's Disturbia, and the Transformers film series.^[208] In that same year, Spielberg and Mark Burnett co-produced On the Lot, a reality and competition show about filmmaking.^[205]

Spielberg returned to the Indiana Jones series in 2008 with the fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Released nineteen years after Last Crusade, the film is set in 1957, pitting Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) against Soviet agents led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), searching for a telepathic crystal skull. Principal photography was complete in October 2007, and the film was released on May 22, 2008.^[209]^[210] This was his first film not released by DreamWorks since 1997.^[211] The film received generally favorable reviews from critics, but some fans were disappointed by the introduction of science fiction elements which were uncharacteristic of the previous films.^[212]^[206] Writing for The Age, Tom Ryan praised Spielberg and George Lucas for their realistic 1950s setting—"The energy on display is impressive".^[213] It was a box office success, grossing $790 million worldwide.^[214]

Starting in 2009, Spielberg shot the first film in a planned trilogy of motion capture films based on Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin.^[215] Spielberg had long been a fan of the comics, and per Michael Farr, Hergé "thought Spielberg was the only person who could ever do Tintin justice."^[216] The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn was co-produced by Peter Jackson and premiered in Brussels, Belgium.^[217] The film was released in North American theaters on December 21, 2011, in Digital 3D and IMAX.^[218] It received generally positive reviews from critics^[219] and grossed over $373 million worldwide.^[220] The Adventures of Tintin won Best Animated Feature at the 69th Golden Globe Awards.^[221] It was the first non-Pixar film to win the award since the category was introduced.^[222]

Spielberg followed Tintin with War Horse, shot in England in the summer of 2010.^[223] It was released four days after Tintin, on December 25, 2011. The film is based on Michael Morpurgo's 1982 novel of the same name and follows the long friendship between a British boy and his horse Joey before and during World War I.^[224] Distributed by Walt Disney Studios with whom DreamWorks made a distribution deal in 2009, War Horse was the first of four consecutive Spielberg films released by Disney. It had an acclaimed response from critics^[224] and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.^[225] In a review for Salon magazine, Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "at this point in his career Spielberg is pursuing personal goals, and everything that's terrific and overly flat and tooth-rottingly sweet about War Horse reflects that."^[226]

Spielberg returned to the World War II theme, co-producing the 2010 miniseries The Pacific with Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman. The miniseries is centered on the battles in the Pacific Theater.^[227] The next year, Spielberg co-created Falling Skies, a science fiction series on TNT, with Robert Rodat.^[228] Spielberg also produced the 2011 Fox series Terra Nova. Terra Nova begins in the year 2149 when all life on the planet Earth is threatened with extinction resulting in scientists opening a door that allows people to travel back 85 million years to prehistoric times.^[229]^[230] In the same year, he produced J. J. Abrams's Super 8.^[231]

Spielberg directed the historical drama Lincoln (2012), starring Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln.^[232] Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and written by Tony Kushner, the film depicts the final four months of Lincoln's life. The film was shot in Richmond, Virginia in late 2011.^[233] and was released in the U.S. in November 2012.^[234] Lincoln was acclaimed and earned more than $250 million worldwide.^[235] It was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director,^[236] winning Best Production Design and Best Actor for Day-Lewis's performance.^[224] Donald Clarke from The Irish Times praised the direction: "Against the odds, Spielberg makes something genuinely exciting of the backstage wheedling."^[237]

2013–present: Recent work

It was announced on May 2, 2013, that Spielberg would direct American Sniper,^[238] but he left the project before production began.^[239] Instead, he directed Bridge of Spies (2015), a Cold War thriller based on the 1960 U-2 incident, and focusing on James B. Donovan's negotiations with the Soviets for the release of pilot Gary Powers after his aircraft was shot down over Soviet territory. It was written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, and starred Tom Hanks as Donovan, as well as Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan and Alan Alda.^[240] It was filmed in the fall of 2014 in New York City, Berlin and Wroclaw, and was released on October 16.^[241]^[242] Bridge of Spies was popular with critics,^[243] and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture; Rylance won Best Supporting Actor, becoming the second actor to win for a performance directed by Spielberg.^[244]

In 2016, Spielberg made The BFG, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's book, starring newcomer Ruby Barnhill, and Mark Rylance as the titular Big Friendly Giant. DreamWorks bought the rights in 2010, and John Madden had intended to direct.^[245] The film was the last to be written by E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison before her death.^[246] It was co-produced and released by Walt Disney Pictures, marking the first Disney-branded film to be directed by Spielberg. The BFG premiered as an out-of-competition entry at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival,^[247]^[248] and received a wide release in the U.S. on July 1, 2016.^[240] The BFG received fair reviews; Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune compared certain scenes to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick,^[249] while Toronto Sun's Liz Braun thought that there were "moments of wonder and delight" but it was too long.^[250]

A year later, Spielberg directed The Post, an account of The Washington Post's printing of the Pentagon Papers.^[251] Starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, production began in New York on May 30, 2017.^[252] Spielberg stated his attraction to the project: "When I read the first draft of the script, this wasn't something that could wait three years or two years—this was a story I felt we needed to tell today."^[253] The film received a wide release on January 12, 2018.^[254] The Post gained positive reception; the critic from the Associated Press thought "Spielberg infuses every scene with tension and life and the grandeur of the ordinary that he's always been so good at conveying."^[255] In 2017, Spielberg and other filmmakers were featured in the Netflix documentary series Five Came Back, which discussed the contributions of directors Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens and William Wyler about their war-related works. Spielberg was also an executive producer.^[256]

Spielberg directed the science fiction Ready Player One (2018), adapted from the novel of the same name by Ernest Cline. It stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance. The plot takes place in 2045 when much of humanity uses virtual reality to escape the real world. Ready Player One began production in July 2016,^[257] and was intended to be released on December 15, 2017,^[258]^[259] but was moved to March 2018 to avoid competition with Star Wars: The Last Jedi.^[260] It premiered at the 2018 South by Southwest film festival.^[261] Spielberg's direction was praised along with the action scenes and visual effects, but many critics thought the film was too long and overused 1980s nostalgia.^[262]^[263]

In 2019, Spielberg filmed West Side Story, an adaptation of the musical of the same name.^[264] It stars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler in her film debut with Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, and Rita Moreno in supporting roles. Written by Tony Kushner, the film stays true to the 1950s setting.^[265] West Side Story was released in December 2021 to positive reviews and received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and Best Director.^[266] Spielberg also received nominations from the Golden Globe Awards, Directors Guild of America, and Critics' Choice Movie Awards.^[267] The Economist praised the choreography, stating that it "stunningly melds beauty and violence".^[268] In March 2022, Spielberg said that West Side Story would be the last musical he will direct.^[269]

Spielberg's 2022 film The Fabelmans is a fictionalized account of his own adolescence, which he wrote with Tony Kushner.^[270] Gabriel LaBelle plays Sammy Fabelman, a character inspired by Spielberg, while Michelle Williams plays Sammy's mother Mitzi Fabelman, Paul Dano plays Burt Fabelman, his father, Seth Rogen plays Bennie Loewy, Burt's best friend and co-worker who becomes Sammy's surrogate uncle, and Judd Hirsch as Mitzi's Uncle Boris.^[271]^[272] Filming began in Los Angeles in July 2021, and the film premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, Spielberg's first appearance at that festival.^[273] It received widespread critical acclaim and won the festival's People's Choice Award.^[274] It received a limited theatrical release on November 11, 2022, by Universal Pictures, before expanding wide on November 23.^[275] Despite the favorable critical reception, West Side Story and The Fabelmans were box office failures, which Variety suggested could be attributed to a decline in the popularity of Spielberg in a film-going environment altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the public's loss of interest in prestige films.^[276] The Fabelmans received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.^[277]^[278] It was, however, a major box office success in France and became the highest-rated film of the 21st century in the country, with a 4.9 average from critics on AlloCiné from 43 reviews, with all but 6 giving the film 5 stars. Cahiers du Cinéma wrote that Spielberg, at age 76, had "come to represent like no other, the idea of cinema as wonder, at a time when the relationship to the spectacular and the cinema seems more tormented than ever" and declared that the film will "undoubtedly remain the most important and singular film of his career."^[279]^[280]

Spielberg had planned to direct Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but he stepped down and was replaced by James Mangold. Spielberg said that he would remain "hands on" as a producer,^[281]^[282] along with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. In 2016, it was announced that it would be written by David Koepp,^[283] with a release by Disney on July 19, 2019.^[284] After a change of filming and release dates,^[285]^[286] it was postponed again when Jonathan Kasdan was announced as the film's new writer.^[287] Soon after, a new release date of July 9, 2021, was announced.^[288] In May 2019, Dan Fogelman was hired to write a new script, and Kasdan's story, focused on the Nazi gold train, would not be used; the script was ultimately credited to Mangold, Koepp, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth.^[289] In April 2020, it was announced that the release of the film was delayed to July 29, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic,^[290] and in October 2021, the release date was again delayed to June 30, 2023.^[291] The film began production in the UK in June 2021^[292] and finished in February 2022.^[293]

In January 2013, HBO confirmed that it was developing a third World War II miniseries based on the book Masters of the Air by Donald L. Miller with Spielberg and Tom Hanks.^[294] NME reported in March 2017 that production was under the working title The Mighty Eighth.^[295] By 2019, it was confirmed development of the series, now titled Masters of the Air, had moved to Apple TV+.^[296] It premiered on January 26, 2024.

Upcoming projects

On June 21, 2021, it was announced that Amblin Entertainment signed a deal with Netflix to release multiple new feature films for the streaming service. Under the deal, Amblin is expected to produce at least two films a year for Netflix for an unspecified number of years.^[297] In February 2022, Deadline Hollywood reported that Spielberg was developing an original film centered around the character Frank Bullitt, a fictional San Francisco police officer originally portrayed by Steve McQueen in the 1968 film Bullitt. The screenplay is set to be written by Josh Singer, who previously co-wrote The Post for Spielberg. McQueen's son Chad and granddaughter Molly will serve as executive producers.^[298] Bradley Cooper was cast as Bullitt in November 2022 and will also serve as producer alongside Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger.^[299]

On January 18, 2023, Spielberg told press at a red carpet event for The Fabelmans that he was executive producing a documentary about John Williams, directed by Laurent Bouzereau with production companies Amblin Television, Imagine Documentaries, and Nedland Media.^[300]^[301]^[302]^[303] Other executive producers for the film include Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Justin Wilkes, Sara Bernstein, and Meredith Kaulfers.^[300] The announcement came days after Williams suggested that he might not retire from film scoring as he had previously announced.^[304]^[305] In April 2024, it was announced that Spielberg was developing a film based on UFOs, with David Koepp attached to pen the script, which will be based on an original idea from Spielberg.^[306]

Prospective projects

In May 2009, Spielberg bought the rights to the life story of Martin Luther King Jr., with the intention of being involved as both the producer and director.^[307] The purchase was made from the King estate, led by son Dexter, while the two other surviving children, the Reverend Bernice and Martin III, immediately threatened to sue, not having given their approvals to the project.^[308] In March 2013, Spielberg announced that he was developing a miniseries based on the life of Napoleon.^[309] In May 2016, it was announced that Cary Joji Fukunaga was in talks to direct the miniseries for HBO, from a script by David Leland based on extensive research materials accumulated by Stanley Kubrick over the years.^[310]

Spielberg was set to film an adaptation of David I. Kertzer's The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in early 2017, for release at the end of that year,^[311] but production had been postponed. It was first announced in 2014, with Tony Kushner adapting the book for the screen.^[312] Mark Rylance, in his fourth collaboration with Spielberg, was announced to star in the role of Pope Pius IX. Spielberg saw more than 2,000 children to play the role of the young Edgardo Mortara.^[313] In 2015, it was announced that Spielberg was attached to direct an adaptation of American photojournalist Lynsey Addario's memoir It's What I Do, with Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role.^[314] In April 2018, it was announced that Spielberg would direct a film adaptation of the Blackhawk comic book series. Warner Bros. would distribute the film with David Koepp writing the script.^[315]