steven spielberg

Spielbergian, kaiju, and eleven (as in “goes to...”) are all now official words in the Oxford English Dictionary.

David Koepp, who wrote ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ is out, and a new writer is at work on the script for the upcoming sequel.

So much for that ‘Ready Player One’ tie-in menu.

Spielberg has two big projects on his plate - but which will hit theaters first?

It’s hard to imagine Hollywood without Steven Spielberg. Spielberg’s career as a filmmaker serves as a perfect parallel for contemporary film history. From his humble beginnings outside the collection of University of Southern California wunderkinds to his commercial dominance at the multiplex, Spielberg did more than just make movies that wowed millions of people around the world: he also disrupted an entire industry, changing the way Hollywood approached filmmaking and establishing the format for blockbuster films that persists to this day.

HBO is turning the camera around on one of the most iconic filmmakers of our time with a new documentary exploring the prolific filmography of beloved director Steven Spielberg. Set to premiere this fall, Spielberg features behind-the-scenes footage from some of the director’s most famous films and boasts an interview roster that is absolutely stacked with talent — including J.J. Abrams, Christian Bale and Oprah Winfrey.

While you and I may know July 3rd as “Fasting in Anticipation of Tomorrow’s Onslaught of Grilled Meats Day,” a certain subset of conspiracy-monger recognizes it as World UFO Day. Apparently, one such believer resides at Sony, as the studio released a mysterious new video on the 3rd and included the hashtag #WorldUFODay in the caption on YouTube. In it, a glowing green air traffic controller’s matrix appears on screen with some slightly-garbled dialogue in the background about an enigmatic foreign craft entering their airspace. While some may find its significance confounding, Spielberg fans recognized the clip straightaway.

We’re still not sure exactly when the new Indiana Jones sequel will happen, but not long ago, Disney and Lucasfilm confirmed that Steven Spielberg is returning to direct Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 5. David Koepp, who worked on the screenplay for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (insert sad trombone) is also reuniting with Spielberg for the upcoming sequel, and according to him, there’s one notable person who won’t be involved — at least on the story level.

Steven Spielberg has only gotten busier in recent years; the prolific director has been adding a fair amount of projects to his growing to-do list, including Indiana Jones 5, set to hit theaters in 2019. Harrison Ford will return to reprise his iconic role as the archaeological adventurer despite repeatedly denied rumors that Disney is looking to pass the torch to a new star. If you had any remaining doubts, Spielberg himself assures fans that Ford isn’t going anywhere — at least not in his Indy universe.

It must be the witching hour because The BFG has arrived!

In October 1984, when Back to the Future would’ve been in early-development stages, a producer gave a friendly suggestion to remedy one of the biggest flaws in the project. The script was “terrific”, everything was fine, but that title. Wouldn’t something along the lines of Space Man from Pluto have a smoother flow, make more sense to audiences, and convey what the movie’s actually about much more succinctly?

When all you care about is money, bad things happen. That’s the message of Jurassic World, where greedy theme-park executives hoping to spike attendance engineer the “Indominus Rex,” a genetically-modified dinosaur that immediately turns on its creators and runs amok. Designed as a cautionary tale about the dangers of building a meaner, badder monster purely for the sake of profits, Jurassic World works equally well as a cautionary tale about doing the same thing in movies. All of the rationalizations provided by Jurassic World’s employees — “Consumers want them bigger, louder, more teeth.” “Somebody’s gotta make sure this company has a future!” — could have been taken directly out of the mouths of the studio executives who approved this gene splice of a reboot and a sequel. Their creation — the Indominus or the movie, there’s basically no difference — is as advertised; huge, mean, and visually striking. But this experiment is not without consequences.