steven spielberg

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the beloved sci-fi novel hits theaters next spring, but your first look is here now.

John Williams is one of Steven Spielberg’s most frequent collaborators, and earlier this year he was set to score both of the director’s upcoming movies: Pentagon Papers drama The Papers and pop culture-infused sci-fi Ready Player One. But because both of these movies are being put together at about the same time (Ready Player One’s production began last year, and The Papers was filmed this spring in a matter of weeks for a December release) Williams has had to give up scoring duties on the latter in favor of the former.

A celebrity ritual no less time-honored than the public callout, the public apology is a vital part of being and remaining famous. Think of it like an annual physical, but for your public profile: say something wild enough to grab some headlines and ensure that your name’s sticking in the population’s heads, let it sit for a short while, and once the time is right, issue a dignified apology to show humility and self-awareness. It’s a rich Hollywood tradition, and Elizabeth Banks is the latest personality to run this gauntlet. But when you come at the king, and most especially when that king is literal King of Hollywood Steven Spielberg, you best not miss.

Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers movie, recently retitled The Papers (before it was The Post), has one of the most ridiculously stacked casts in recent memory — and it just recruited more members. Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Jesse Plemons, Matthew Rhys, Michael Stuhlbarg, Bradley Whitford, Zach Woods, and Pat Healy have signed up help out Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep investigate America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

The antics of Yakko, Wakko and Dot were timeless enough that an Animaniacs revival feels long-overdue. The three may just get loose from the Warner tower yet again, as reports suggest Warner Bros. animation is tooling around with a new Animaniacs, once again guided by Steven Spielberg.

Everyone remembers E.T. and his famous lines like “Be good” and “E.T. phone home.” But did you know that the voice of E.T. was provided by at least 18 different people? It’s true; the majority of his lines were provided by Pat Welsh, an elderly smoker. But additional sounds and lines were provided by director Steven Spielberg, actress Debra Winger, and sound designer Ben Burtt’s sleeping wife when she had a cold. That’s just one of the extra-terrestrial facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

If you grabbed some random schmo of the street and demanded they name a composer of film scores, they’d probably name John Williams if they could come up with any answer at all. (Unless you ended up with some smart-aleck in the know who busted out Alexandre Desplat or Mica Levi or something.) Williams is responsible for pretty much every movie theme hummed by general populace over the last four decades: as you read these words, I know you’ll hear the triumphant fanfare of the Star Wars score, or the ominous duh-dum of the Jaws theme. And today, Hans Zimmer can go right ahead and eat his heart out, because Williams’ most famed compositions will soon be immortalized in one essential compilation.

Given how much space physical media takes up, it’s hard for movie buffs to say no to the great promise of “cloud storage,” and the idea that we could summon anything we want to watch with just a couple of clicks. But so far, reality hasn’t matched the hype. Streaming services have been focused on exclusives and original programming, to the extent that the only way to have access to everything available is to spend hundreds of dollars a month on subscription fees. Meanwhile, older films keep disappearing from the digital archives; and even items that cinephiles “own” sometimes become inaccessible whenever software updates or a site shutters.

It’s pretty well known that Steven Spielberg was a major force (h’yuck) in getting J.J. Abrams the assignment directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm wanted a director. Spielberg wanted Abrams to get the gig. “I brought J.J.’s name up,” he said in a roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I thought J.J. would be the best person to direct Episode VII and I called J.J. and said ‘Would you do it if it was offered to you?’” Abrams was initially reluctant (he thought his wife wouldn’t want him to take any more time-consuming franchise gigs), so Spielberg actually took Abrams and his wife Katie out to dinner on Lucasfilm’s behalf, asked Katie if it was cool if J.J. directed Star Wars, and basically made a Love Connection of the whole thing. The rest was history.

The majority of the creatures in Gremlins, like Gizmo and Stripe, were all puppets created for the movie. But, before they decided on puppets, they actually tried to get monkeys to play the Gremlins, but the monkeys started freaking out when they put the masks on them. This is just one of the Gremlins facts in the latest installment of You Think You Know Movies!

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

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.