#directedbyspielberg

2016 Steven Spielberg’s The BFG is a 3-D fantasy adventure film adapted from Roald Dahl‘s classic children’s book, The BFG. It is co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Walden Media.

Watch the trailer

The screenplay is written by Melissa Mathison who also penned the script for E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Fittingly, the tagline and typography of The BFG’s poster evoke Spielberg’s masterpiece E.T.

This is the final film written by Melissa Mathison before her death in 2015. It is dedicated to her as a tribute. Spielberg about his collaboration with Mathison:

"I don't miss Melissa yet because I haven't had the chance to mourn her, because she is still with me. I'm not saying that in a supernatural way, because Melissa is alive in every single frame of The BFG. She has been with me all through this process and she is as tangible as if she were sitting next to me. What I'm not looking forward to is when I finish with The BFG and I have to face the fact that Melissa is no longer with me."

"Melissa could do something most of us could not. She observed people without judging them. The only other people I can think of who observe with curiosity and without judgment are children. And I think that's why she understood them and wrote them better than anyone else."

The BFG is a Big Friendly Giant and nothing like the other inhabitants of Giant Country. Standing 24-feet tall with enormous ears and a keen sense of smell, he is endearingly dim-witted and keeps to himself for the most part. In contrast, giants like Bloodbottler and Fleshlumpeater are twice as big and at least twice as scary. Upon her arrival in Giant Country, Sophie, a 10-year-old orphan girl from London, is initially frightened of the mysterious giant who has brought her to his cave, but soon comes to realize that the BFG is actually quite gentle and charming. Together, they set out on an adventure to capture the evil, man-eating giants who have been invading the human world.

Spielberg had read Roald Dahl’s book to his then-young children. He recalls:

"They loved the privacy and secrecy of his own special giant-speak. And they also loved that this little 8-year-old girl can tell a 26-foot-tall giant what to do."

The BFG is the first Disney-branded film directed by Spielberg and the first with a female lead since The Color Purple (1985). Spielberg explains why the story appealed to him:

“It’s a story about friendship, it’s a story about loyalty and protecting your friends and it’s a story that shows that even a little girl can help a big giant solve his biggest problems.”

The film stars Ruby Barnhill, Mark Rylance, Penelope Wilton, Jemaine Clement, Rebecca Hall, Rafe Spall and Bill Hader.  

The BFG marks Spielberg’s second collaboration with Mark Rylance who won an Academy Award for Bridge of Spies. (2015). Rylance plays the title role via motion-capture – a process of recording movement and mimics of actors that Spielberg previously applied in his film The Adventure of Tintin (2011). 

Spielberg tries to convince Gene Wilder to do a cameo in the film, but Wilder declines. He appeared as the title character of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) which is based on another story written by Roald Dahl. 

Principal photography takes place between 23 March 2015 to 16 June 2015, with filming locations in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada as well as in Scotland and England. 

Development for the film project goes back as far as 1991 when producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy set up a deal with Paramount Pictures. Robin Swicord and Nicholas Kazan write a screenplay in 1998 (revised by Gwyn Lurie in 2001), with Robin Williams in mind for the title role. 

In September 2011, DreamWorks picks up the film rights to the book, with Kennedy and Marshall set to produce, and Melissa Mathison as screenwriter. Originally, John Madden is supposed to direct but in April 2014, Steven Spielberg takes the helm (Madden remains attached as executive producer). After Walden Media agrees to co-finance and co-produce the film, Walt Disney Studios joins The BFG as a co-producer and co-financier.

Regular Spielberg collaborators include: Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski, Editor Michael Kahn, Composer John Williams, Production designer Rick Carter, and Costume designer Joanna Johnston. Visual effects are created by Weta Digital. 

The BFG is produced by Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall and Sam Mercer with Kathleen Kennedy, John Madden, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Michael Siegel, Frank Smith and Naia Cucukov serving as executive producers. 

Roald Dahl’s books, which also include “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach” and “Matilda,” are currently available in 58 languages and have sold over 200 million copies worldwide. 

Originally created as a bedtime story, “The BFG” was Dahl’s own favorite of all his stories and is made into a live action film for the first time, marking Dahl’s 100th birthday. Spielberg notes: 

“It was very important for us to be loyal to the language, and the great writer Melissa Mathison, who also wrote E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, wrote The BFG.”

Roald Dahl created the fantasy language Gobblefunk, which is spoken by the BFG. Here is a glossary of some of his words:

Cannybully . . . . . . . . . . . Cannibal

Delumptious. . . . . . . . . . Delicious

Frobscottle . . . . . . . . . . . Carbonated soft drink where bubbles float downwards rather than upwards

Glumptious. . . . . . . . . . . Scrumptious 

Golden Phizzwizard . . . . A wonderful dream

Human Beans . . . . . . . . . Human Beings

Jiggyraffes. . . . . . . . . . . . Giraffes

Majester . . . . . . . . . . . . . Majesty

Phizzwizards . . . . . . . . . . Happy dreams

Scrumdiddlyumptious . . Scrumptious

Snozzcumber . . . . . . . . . A gruesome vegetable only found in Giant Country   

Telly-telly Bunkum Box  . Television

Trogglehumper. . . . . . . . A horrible nightmare

Whizzpopper  . . . . . . . . . Fart

The BFG has its world premiere out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14 prior to its U.S. opening on July 1. E.T. - The Extraterrestrial (1982) also premiered on the Croisette. Just like E.T., Spielberg’s The BFG receives standing ovations.

In his Cannes review, Variety critic Peter Debruge writes: 

“That’s the beauty of Roald Dahl’s The BFG, as brought to life by recent Oscar winner Mark Rylance: You believe. No matter how fantastical the tale (and it gets pretty out-there at points), this splendid Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation makes it possible for audiences of all ages to wrap their heads around one of the unlikeliest friendships in cinema history, resulting in the sort of instant family classic “human beans” once relied upon Disney to deliver.”

2015 Walt Disney Pictures releases first teaser trailer for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming fantasy adventure film The BFG (2016). It’s the first time Spielberg directs a live-action 3D film.

The talents of three of the world’s greatest storytellers – Roald Dahl, Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg – unite to bring Dahl’s classic children’s book The BFG to life. The screenplay is written by Melissa Mathison who also penned Spielberg’s E.T. - The Extraterrestrial (1982).

The film tells the imaginative story of a young girl and the Giant who introduces her to the wonders and perils of Giant Country. The BFG (Mark Rylance), while a giant himself, is a Big Friendly Giant and nothing like the other inhabitants of Giant Country, e.g. Bloodbottler (Bill Hader) and Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement). Standing 24-feet tall with enormous ears and a keen sense of smell, he is endearingly dim-witted and keeps to himself for the most part. Upon her arrival in Giant Country, Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), a precocious 10-year-old girl from London, is initially frightened of the mysterious giant who has brought her to his cave, but comes to realize that the BFG is actually quite gentle and charming, and, having never met a giant before, has many questions. Sophie and the BFG soon depart for London to see the Queen (Penelope Wilton) and warn her of the precarious situation, but they must first convince the Queen and her maid, Mary (Rebecca Hall), that giants do indeed exist. Together, they set out on an adventure to capture the evil, man-eating giants who have been invading the human world.

After his impressive portrayal of Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies (2015), Mark Rylance once again plays a major role in a Steven Spielberg film. Principal photography for The BFG begins just three months after Bridge of Spies wraps.

Filming locations are: Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada), Blenheim Palace, Woodstock (Oxfordshire, United Kingdom), Buckingham Palace, Westminster (London, United Kingdom), Skye, Highland (Scotland, United Kingdom).

The film’s score is composed by John Williams. Other regular Spielberg-collaborators are: Director of Photography Janusz Kamiński, Editor Michael Kahn, as well as producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. The stunning visual effects are created by Weta Digital.

The film is a co-production between Walt Disney Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Walden Media. 

2012 Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Lincoln covers the final few months of US President Abraham Lincoln’s life, focusing on his efforts to have the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution passed by the House of Representatives - resulting in the abolition of slavery in the United States of America. Lincoln is teaching us how to reach a consensus and succeed in backstage politics when pressing issues of society need to be solved. So, in essence, it’s a contemporary story told in a historic setting.

The film is produced by Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, the screenplay is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Spielberg on his motivation to do the film:

“The Lincoln project is something that I have been fascinated with all my life. Like the kid in Minority Report, I used to cut out the profiles of Presidents in third grade. Lincoln was my favorite profile. (…) As I got older, I began reading history books and I became like a history major. I never really majored in history in school but it was my most favorite subject. (…) I realized that Lincoln changed the history of the world.”

Daniel Day-Lewis brilliantly portrays President Abraham Lincoln, leading a formidable cast that includes Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, Tim Blake Nelson, Lukas Haas, and Tommy Lee Jones. 

Adam Driver - who will be cast as the villain in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) - plays Washington war-room telegraph officer Samuel Beckwith. Kevin Kline makes a cameo appearance as a wounded soldier.

In preparation for The Unfinished Journey (1999) - a 21-minute short film directed by Spielberg and screened at the 2000 Millennium Gala in Washington DC, right in front of the Lincoln Memorial - Spielberg consults historians such as Stephen Ambrose, and Doris Goodwin. Asked about her current projects, Goodwin tells Spielberg that she is writing a book called “Team of Rivals” about Lincoln and his cabinet. Spielberg buys the film rights on the spot.

In the early stages of development, John Logan signs on to write a first draft. It is rewritten by playwright Paul Webb. He prefers to cover the entirety of Lincoln’s term as President. Due to Spielberg’s dissatisfaction with the script, the filming is delayed. He assigns another playwright who impressed Spielberg with his script for Munich (2005): Tony Kushner.

Kushner finds the Lincoln script assignment daunting because “I don’t understand what he did any more than I understand how William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet or Mozart wrote Così fan tutte.” Kushner’s initial 491-page draft focuses on four months in the life of Lincoln, and by 2009 he rewrites it to mostly cover two months in Lincoln’s life when he is preoccupied with adopting the Thirteenth Amendment.

Initially, Liam Neeson is cast as Lincoln, having previously worked with Spielberg in Schindler’s List (1993). In preparation for the role, Neeson studies Lincoln extensively - but leaves the project in 2010, stating that he realized during a table read that the part was not right for him. Neeson suggests Daniel Day-Lewis as his replacement and personally argues him into accepting the part. Spielberg and Kushner fly to Ireland to meet with Day-Lewis, followed by more rewrites before the actor finally agrees (after some more encouragement from Leonardo DiCaprio).

Financing the film takes nearly three years. Spielberg pitches the movie at Paramount, following the purchase of DreamWorks by Paramount’s parent company Viacom, in 2006, but the studio complains the budget, even pared to $50 million, is too high and its subject too close to Spielberg’s Amistad (1997), one of his least commercially successful movies.

Frustrated by the financing problems, Spielberg admits Lincoln came “this close” to premiering on HBO as opposed to premiering in theaters. When DreamWorks sets up a new distribution arrangement with The Walt Disney Company, the studio agrees to take North American rights. 20th Century Fox takes international rights, putting up half the production cost. To lay off some risk, DreamWorks turns to another frequent partner, Participant Media, and the film can finally be made.

Principal photography is completed in 64 days, most of it taking place in Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, Virginia. A former AMF Bowling plant in Mechanicsville, is used for a set that re-creates the interiors of the White House. “We worked hard to be as historically accurate as possible, all the way to the room where Mary and Lincoln had their scenes,” says production designer Rick Carter. “The wallpaper, rugs, everything was as accurate as it could possibly be.”

According to Director of Photography Janusz Kamiński, he and Spielberg agree on the first day to go for dim lighting that would reflect the use of candles and gaslight in the era. “We knew this was a haunted movie about a man carrying a tremendous burden,” says Rick Carter. “We wanted to go with almost a black-and-white photo yet always be able to pick out what was important in the frame.” The low light is a tool to direct the viewer’s eye. “I wanted to create depth of Lincoln’s character through lighting,” says Kamiński. “In group shots in his office, I set the light so your eye would go to Lincoln.” In later scenes, while the amendment is passed, Kamiński seeks to play against Lincoln’s iconic image. The result is an angelic but natural shot of Lincoln bathed in light. “I wanted to create a very intimate image of this man on the most important day of his life: He’s still a father, and he’s still allocating time to be with his family and his son.”

On set, cast and crew act reverential towards the subject at hand: Conversations between scenes are kept to a whisper, and no one talks to Day-Lewis unless it is necessary. Spielberg, whose typical attire when directing is a baseball cap and jeans, wears suits and ties. He not only addresses Day-Lewis as “Mr. President” but also calls many of the actors by their characters’ names as he immerses himself in American history.

Describing his experience playing Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis says, “I never, ever felt that depth of love for another human being that I never met. And that’s, I think, probably the effect that Lincoln has on most people that take the time to discover him… I wish he had stayed [with me] forever.”

“The toughest part about actually making the film,” says Spielberg, “was that it was eventually going to come to an end. After the first day of shooting, I started mourning the last day of shooting. (…) It’s rare that this has ever happened. E.T. might be the only other time.”

Lincoln is shot on 35mm film and cut on Avid, marking the third time that Michael Kahn edits digitally for Spielberg. “Steven saw how efficient it was, how it saved it a lot of time, so we’ve been on Avid ever since,” says Kahn, who was noted for his speed on the Moviola and KEM. He admits that he’s never cut a film comparable to Lincoln before. “This picture has more dialogue, more getting into people’s heads. A lot of editors say dialogue is the hardest thing to make work, and after Lincoln I have to agree. Audiences won’t see our decisions to cut or not to cut, but the decisions are there.”

For his restrained and respectful composition of the film score, John Williams continues to laboriously write his notes by hand with pencil and paper at a piano - rejecting modern technologies and still managing to yield music of his established, superior quality.

Lincoln receives widespread critical acclaim, with major praise directed to the acting, especially Day-Lewis’ performance, as well as the direction and production merits.

Roger Ebert gives the film 4 out of 4 stars and says in his review, “The hallmark of the man, performed so powerfully by Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, is calm self-confidence, patience and a willingness to play politics in a realistic way.”

A. O. Scott from The New York Times states the film “is finally a movie about how difficult and costly it has been for the United States to recognize the full and equal humanity of black people” and concludes that the movie is “a rough and noble democratic masterpiece” - a portrait that is “intimate but also decorous, drawn with extraordinary sensitivity and insight and focused, above all, on Lincoln’s character as a politician. This is, in other words, less a biopic than a political thriller, a civics lesson that is energetically staged and alive with moral energy.”

Despite its running time of 150 minutes, the film is also a huge commercial success, proving that a lot of moviegoers approach it as more than just a dull history lesson. In only its first four weekends of wide release, Lincoln grosses more than $275 million worldwide (against a budget of $65 million). Washington insiders see the film as an object lesson in how a president should work with Congress (the film is screened at the White House and the Senate).

The film is nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards including Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director for Spielberg, winning Best Actor (Motion Picture – Drama) for Daniel Day-Lewis.

2011 Steven Spielberg's touching World War I drama War Horse is based on Michael Morpurgo's 1982 children's novel of the same name. The film is produced by Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, with executive producers Frank Marshall and Revel Guest.

Michael Morpurgo tries to adapt his book into a film screenplay, working for over five years, but nothing comes out of it. However, the novel is successfully adapted for a stage play by Nick Stafford in 2007. The film cannot be told solely through the horse's viewpoint (as in the book), so most of the film is based on the narrative approach of the stage play. Unlike the play, which features puppet horses, the film uses real horses as well as practical effects (and extremely limited computer-generated imagery).

In 2009, film producer Kathleen Kennedy attends the stage play in London's West End and tells Spielberg about it. Eventually DreamWorks acquires the film rights to the book. Spielberg goes to see the stage play in early 2010 and meets some of the London cast, admitting to being moved to tears by their performance.

DreamWorks executive Stacey Snider suggests Richard Curtis to work on rewrites for the drafts that Michael Morpurgo and Lee Hall have turned in. Curtis produces more than a dozen drafts in three months, working closely with Spielberg who is set to produce the film. Excited by the results, Spielberg finally decides to also direct - while he is waiting for the animations of his other 2011-release film, The Adventures of Tintin, to be completed.

After having hundreds of young boys read for the lead role, resulting in some speculation, that Eddie Redmayne might have been cast for it, Spielberg chooses relatively unknown stage actor Jeremy Irvine instead, describing his performance as "very natural, very authentic." It is his first film role, and he has never ridden a horse prior to War Horse.

The film’s brilliant cast includes British, French and German actors (playing characters of their respective nationalities), among them Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell, David Kross, and Peter Mullan. Robert Emms, lead actor in the London stage play, is cast as David Lyons. In addition to the main cast, some 5,800 extras are used in the film. Michael Morpurgo can be seen in a cameo role at the auction - as he is visiting the set several times.

Principal photography lasts for about 64 days, beginning with the cavalry charge, where the British cavalry, 130 horses in total and many hundreds of extras, charge the German machine gun lines. It is is filmed at Stratfield Saye House in north Hampshire, and results in one of the most devastating war sequences directed by Spielberg.

As Jeremy Irvine remembers: 

"It was terrifying. The smoke and the smell and the taste of the guns firing. It’s not difficult to act scared in that situation. There’s no doubt this was deliberate: not only to have the film look great, but to have that effect on the actors. It was an eye-opening scene."

Tom Hiddleston recalls Spielberg’s advice: 

"He said, 'Give me your war face, and the camera's going to move across, and as you feel it come up in front of you, I want you to de-age yourself by 20 years. So you're 29, and when you see those machine guns, you're 9 years old. I want to see the child in you.' And I just thought that was one of the most astonishing acting notes I'd ever been given.“ 

Emily Watson also praises Spielberg's directing: 

"On set, he'd come in, in the morning, and say, 'I couldn't sleep last night. I was worrying about this shot!' Which was great! He's human and he's still working in an impassioned way, like a 21-year-old, trying to make the best out of everything."

When Kathleen Kennedy sends Spielberg photographs of the various countryside locations she has scouted for him, he decides to cut other elements of the story to enable more filming in Dartmoor, Devon. Spielberg: "I have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming War Horse on Dartmoor.”

After working on James Cameron's Avatar (2009), production designer Rick Carter, Spielberg's long-term collaborator, joins the War Horse crew. This time, he does not have to create a new reality, but rather to take a living landscape and make it as much a character in the film as any human being - or horse.

The famous horse's image from the final scene, shot against the saturated red sky, looks like a nod to epics like Gone With the Wind (1939), but according to cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, the resemblance is unconscious: "I didn't even know there was an image similar to that!" Kamiński acknowledges that he used John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) as a template for his exterior filming, paying particular attention to Ford's panoramic sky, landscape and terrain.

After having directed six films with World War II themes, Spielberg tackles his first film dealing with World War I. Sequences in the barbed wire trenches recall World War I classics such as Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957).

During filming, fourteen different horses are used as the main horse character Joey, eight of them portraying him as an adult animal, four as a colt and two as foals. Up to 280 horses are used in a single scene. An animatronic horse is used for some parts of the scenes where Joey is trapped in barbed wire (the wire is rubber prop wire). Working with horses - on this scale - is new to Spielberg: 

"When I'm on an Indy movie, I'm watching Indiana Jones, not the horse he is riding ... Suddenly I'm faced with the challenge of making a movie where I not only had to watch the horse, I had to compel the audience to watch it along with me. I had to pay attention to what it was doing and understand its feelings. It was a whole new experience for me."

Michael Kahn edits War Horse during filming in his trailer on set. Kahn and Spielberg cut the scenes digitally on an Avid, rather than on film.

Visual effects for the film are created by London-based company Framestore. According to Spielberg, the film's only digital effects are three shots lasting three seconds, which were undertaken to ensure the safety of the horse: "That's the thing I'm most proud of. Everything you see on screen really happened."

Spielberg comments on the film score composed by John Williams: "I feel that John has made a special gift to me of this music, which was inspired not only by my film but also by many of the picturesque settings of the poet William Wordsworth, whose vivid descriptions of the British landscape inspired much of what you are going to hear."

The film opens to positive reviews, with Roger Ebert saying the film contains "surely some of the best footage Spielberg has ever directed". He writes: "The film is made with superb artistry. Spielberg is the master of an awesome canvas. Most people will enjoy it, as I did." 

2005 Steven Spielberg’s political thriller Munich follows a squad of Mossad assassins as they track down and kill alleged supporters of the group Black September, which is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Eric Bana stars as the leader of the assassins group, Avner Kaufman. The international cast includes actors such as Ciarán Hinds, Omar Metwally, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Ayelet Zurer, Gila Almagor, Karim Saleh, Ziad Adwan, Moritz Bleibtreu, and Meret Becker. The film also stars a future James Bond actor (Daniel Craig) plus actors of a former (Michael Lonsdale) and a later (Mathieu Amalric) Bond villain.

The role of Ephraim (played by Geoffrey Rush) is originally intended for Ben Kingsley but he has to opt out due to a reshoot of Steven Spielberg's The Terminal (2004) which causes the start of the production for Munich to be pushed back a few weeks later, thus conflicting with Kingsley's work schedule on Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005).

After six years of preparation, Spielberg directs his most ambitious project since Schindler 's List, fully aware that he is risking his reputation as a filmmaker and his capital of mass audience appeal, but determined to speak his mind on a subject that deeply concerns him. In his portrayal about the opening days of the perpetual cycle of terror-styled violence between Israelis and Palestinians, he does his best to tell the story in an unbiased manner, giving both a voice and condemning the deadly attacks on both sides. 

The screenplay, written by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, is based on George Jonas’ controversial book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team (published in 1984), after Producer Kathleen Kennedy brought the book to Spielberg’s attention. After acquiring the film rights, Spielberg commissions three scripts: one from David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, one from Charles Randolph, and one from Eric Roth, eventually selecting Roth's script which is revised by Tony Kushner. In order to clarify that the film is a dramatization of historic and fictional events it begins with an opening title saying "Inspired by real events“.

Spielberg asserts that many people would have felt more comfortable if he made a film that said all targeted assassinations are a bad or a good thing:

"But the movie doesn't take either of those positions. It refuses to. Many of those pundits on the left and right would love the film to land somewhere definite. It puts a real burden on the audience to figure out for themselves how they feel about these issues. There are no easy answers to the most complex story of the last 50 years. (…) What I'm trying to say is, if this movie bothers you, frightens you, upsets you, maybe it's not a good idea to ignore that. Maybe you need to think about why you're having that reaction."

As Spielberg puts it, there are "unintended consequences“ in everything that has to do with violence, and in his film he depicts the growing disproportions of the counterterrorism response. The assassins’ futile attempts at minimizing collateral damage and the deaths of innocents is summed up in a Hitchcock-inspired sequence (videoclip) where the team must coordinate the bombing of a target in Paris without killing the man's wife and child: A truck obscures the car holding the Mossad assassins, preventing them from seeing the man's daughter return and pick up the rigged phone meant to kill her father. This time, they barely manage to deactivate the trigger, though once the girl leaves again, they set off the explosive without compunction. It's a brief show of moral superiority to terrorists who put civilians in harm's way, but it doesn't last. Similar to Schindler’s List, Spielberg uses the little girl (again dressed in red) as a metaphor, representing the people that are accidentally killed during the mission.

According to Spielberg, Munich is “the most European film I have ever made“, drawing inspiration from classics such as Costa-Gavras’ Z (1969), Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal (1973), and William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971). Director of Photography, Janusz Kamiński applies the long lenses and zooms as well as the colors typical for that period of film. Kamiński on the notorious sex scene featuring Eric Bana, intercut with the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes as he orgasms: “It's almost over-the-top to some degree, right?" (…) "It's not a delicate little scene," Kaminski says. "It is what it is, and [Spielberg] wanted to take this chance because it reflected the movie: his anger, his primal fear, his primal desire to be alive." And his feeling of trauma and guilt that strips him of his own humanity in service of a dubious "an eye for an eye” scheme…

Spielberg calls Munich his "Prayer for Peace“, exploring his conflicts and concerns about how a nation should respond to terrorist attacks. By depicting the Twin Towers of the New York World Trade Center in the film’s final shot, Spielberg links Munich’s subtext to the present, i.e. the US government’s response to the 9/11 attacks, with Spielberg questioning it as excessive and a potential trigger for another perpetual cycle of terror in the Middle East.

The time span between the start of production to the film’s release date is less than six months. Principal photography takes place in Malta, Budapest, Paris, New York, and Munich. In order to finish the film on time, Michael Kahn edits all of the scenes shot in Malta and Hungary on the spot. Each day Spielberg reviews an edited scene that has been shot two days earlier. Two copies of the edited material are sent out, one to John Williams as reference for his composition and the other to Ben Burtt for sound effects. The Paris and New York scenes are edited two weeks after wrapping, and the final cut is completed after another two weeks.

The film’s mournful atmosphere and melancholy between both the Israelis and Palestinians is interpreted by John Williams’ magnificent score, sharing musical themes across cultures, with restrained beauty and subtle instrumentation.

The film is a critical success but is also one of Spielberg's lowest-grossing films, earning $130.4 million at the worldwide box office (against a budget of $70 million). Conservative circles in Israel and the US attack Munich for what they call the film's equating the Israeli assassins with "terrorists". The heated discussion results in the depiction of Spielberg’s face on the covers of Time magazine, Germany’s DER SPIEGEL and other international media.

Munich receives five Academy Awards nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Spielberg), Best Adapted Screenplay (Kushner and Roth), Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn) and Best Original Score (John Williams), winning none.

In his review, Roger Ebert concludes: "With this film [Spielberg] has dramatically opened a wider dialogue, helping to make the inarguable into the debatable.“ 

Ian Nathan writes in his review for Empire: "Munich is Steven Spielberg’s most difficult film. It arrives already inflamed by controversy... This is Spielberg operating at his peak — an exceptionally made, provocative and vital film for our times."

2005 Steven Spielberg’s grim and gripping War of the Worlds, starring Tom Cruise, is an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds, published in 1897. Spielberg shifts the action from London to the United States East Coast of present day. 

It is an imaginative remake of one of Spielberg’s favorite films from his childhood, Byron Haskin’s The War of the Worlds (1953). Spielberg integrates several references to Haskin’s film: Gene Barry and Ann Robinson have cameo appearances near the end; a long, snake-like camera probe is deployed by the invaders (and chopped off) in a similar manner as in the 1953 film; the shot of the dying alien's arm coming down the ramp is another nod to the original film.

The film is a co-production between DreamWorks, Amblin Entertainment and Cruise/Wagner Productions. After the highly successful Minority Report (2002), Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise are eager to work together again. Tom Cruise as blue-collar worker Ray Ferrier portrays an astonishing character arc from divorced egocentric to protective father desperately trying to reconnect to his children under the worst imaginable circumstances.

For the second time since E.T. - The Extraterrestrial (1982), Spielberg succeeds in motivating child actors (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chitin) to act intensely and convincingly throughout the movie. Miranda Otto who plays Ray Ferrier’s divorced wife originally turns down the part offered by Steven Spielberg as she is newly pregnant. However, Spielberg wants her to play the part and changes the script to incorporate her pregnancy into the role. Tim Robbins delivers one of the most spine-chilling performances of his career. His line, "It's not a war any more than it's a war between men and maggots", is a slightly modified quote from the original novel.

J. J. Abrams is asked by Spielberg and Cruise to write the screenplay but has to decline as he is working on the pilot for his television series Lost. Josh Friedman steps in and delivers a first draft, which is rewritten by David Koepp (Jurassic Park), creating a contemporary story with a fantasy premise, but told in a hyper-realistic way. Koepp takes the modern world back to the 1800s, with the characters being devoid of electricity and modern techniques of communication. After re-reading the novel, he adds the narrator (spoken by Morgan Freeman) and creates a list of elements he would not use due to being "cliché", e.g. the destruction of landmark buildings.

War of the Worlds is Spielberg's third film on the subject of alien visitation, along with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Producer Kathleen Kennedy notes that this time, Spielberg is intent on exploring the antithesis of the characters brought to life in the preceding films: "When we first started developing E.T., it was a much edgier, darker story and it actually evolved into something that was more benign. I think that the edgier, darker story has always been somewhere inside him. Now, he's telling that story."

According to Spielberg, War of the Worlds is a polar opposite to Close Encounters, with that movie featuring a man leaving family to travel with aliens, while War of the Worlds focuses on keeping the family together. On Spielberg’s request, the idea of the aliens arriving in spaceships is discarded from the script. Instead, Spielberg wants to present the invaders' Tripods as having been there all along, buried deep under the Earth. The answer to the question of „Why?“ is hinted at in the narrator’s introduction to Spielberg’s film: The aliens may have left their hidden machines and departed, patiently observing the Earth until humans would multiply to the requisite numbers - like livestock living in an alien food farm.

References to 9/11 and the War on Terror are omnipresent (e.g. attack on the U.S. homeland, people blown to ashes, missing-persons displays, crashed Boeing 747, massive military counterattacks etc.). Psychologically, the scene with the Tripod emerging from deep underneath (videoclip) can be read as a metaphor of society's subconscious fear and hate of the unknown, spurred on by religious fanatics inside and outside the US (the first building the Tripod destroys is a church), waiting to wreak havoc once unleashed. Spielberg may refer to this when describing the Tripods as "a wake-up call to face our fears as we confront a force intent on destroying our way of life."

Pre-production is finished after three months, half the amount of time normally allotted for a film of similar size and scope - made possible by extensive use of ILM’s pre-visualization technology. Spielberg notes, "This is the first film I really tackled using the computer to animate all the storyboards." As a result, principal photography wraps after just 73 days, using five different sound stages as well as locations in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. Director of Photography Janusz Kamiński limits panoramic images to the minimum to allude to the amateur footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City: Almost all shots, especially during the Tripod attacks, are filmed with the camera set at a person's eye-sight.

ILM, with Dennis Muren as senior visual effects supervisor, provides the film with its impressive visual effects. In order to keep the realism, CGI and bluescreen shots are blended with miniature and live-action footage - the destruction of the Bayonne Bridge being the most complicated scene of this type. When depicting the Tripods, the ILM crew tries to blend organic and mechanical elements. Spielberg describes them as moving like "scary ballet dancers". The tripod design for the alien machines is based on H.G. Wells' original description from his book, including the heat rays at the ends of arms. The "red weed" is also from the novel, as is the alien "need" for humans.

According to Kaminski, the intricate long shot where Cruise and his children flee in their car is meant to resemble one single take, but it is actually three different takes stitched together digitally by ILM. First, the filmmakers block off a Long Island freeway and shoot the exteriors using a motorcyclist as the guide for Cruise's car, then they shoot plates for the outside of the car by attaching cameras to it on all sides. Finally, Spielberg and Kaminski film the actors in the car on a soundstage, repeating the same camera moves from the previous two shots. "ILM brilliantly married all those elements and created this really wonderful thing," says Kaminski. 

For the first time, John Williams has to compose with an incomplete Spielberg film, as only the first six reels, i.e. sixty minutes, are ready for him to use as reference. He considers the score "a very serious piece," which has to combine "frightening atmosphere" with "propulsively rhythmic drive for the action scenes".

When War of the Worlds hits theatres, Spielberg immediately starts filming his next project Munich which is released the same year - another double salvo by Spielberg.

Most critics react positively to War of the Worlds, with the general public reacting less enthusiastically. Many people (and critics) praise the film's beginning while disapproving the ending. Roger Ebert criticizes the "retro design" and considered that despite the big budget, the alien invasion was "rudimentary" and "not very interesting", regarding the best scenes as Ray walking among the airliner wreckage and a train running in flames, declaring that "such scenes seem to come from a kind of reality different from that of the tripods."

War of the Worlds is nominated for three Academy Awards, including Visual Effects, Sound Mixing (Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer and Ron Judkins), and Sound Editing, losing all to Peter Jackson’s King Kong. The film is a huge box office success, grossing $591 million worldwide against a lavish budget of $132 million. At the time of its release it is the highest grossing film starring Tom Cruise. 

2002 Catch Me If You Can, "the true story of a real fake“: 15 years after Empire of the Sun (1987), Spielberg once again tells the story of a young man who loses his childlike innocence due to traumatic circumstances. It deals with Spielbergian themes of dysfunctional families, absent fathers and troubled childhoods.

The screenplay, written by Jeff Nathanson, is based on Frank Abagnale’s memoirs who, after his parents separate, runs away to Manhattan to start his "career" as one of the world's most wanted con artists - cashing millions of dollars in fraudulent checks in 26 countries before his 19th birthday, by impersonating a Pan Am pilot, pediatrician, and legal prosecutor.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks; the excellent cast also includes Christopher Walken, Amy Adams, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye, Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Garner, Frank John Hughes, and Ellen Pompeo.

Spielberg’s breezily told, touching and profound film is done in the New Hollywood tradition of anti-establishment stories, with "anti-heroes" such as Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid turning out to be smarter and ultimately more sympathetic than the sheriffs and detectives that are hot on their heels. It is set in an era when women wore cocktail dresses and men wore hats and ties all the time - a period when transactions were done on a handshake and Kennedy’s optimistic phrase "To the Moon!" was coined. As Spielberg explains,

"Frank was a 21st century genius working within the innocence of the mid '60s, when people were more trusting than they are now. I don't think this is the kind of movie where somebody could say, 'I have a career plan.'“

The origins of the film go back to 1977, when Abagnale writes his autobiography after his performance in Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. A year later he sells the film rights, but the story remains in "turnaround" at several studios. At the time, Dustin Hoffman is considered for the lead role. Twenty years later, the rights are sold to DreamWorks. Over time, David Fincher, Lasse Hallström, Miloš Forman, and Cameron Crowe are considered as candidates for director. When Leonardo DiCaprio joins the project he wants to do the film with Gore Verbinsky directing but Verbinski drops out because DiCaprio has to do reshoots for Martin Scorsese’s troubled film Gangs of New York (2003). DiCaprio turns to Steven Spielberg, who finally decides to direct himself, dropping projects such as Big Fish and Memoirs of a Geisha. 

On Spielberg’s request, Tom Hanks is cast for the role of FBI inspector Carl Hanratty, replacing James Gandolfini. The search for Brenda Strong’s portrayer goes on for months before Amy Adams is eventually cast. Producer Walter F. Parkes comments that she is “as fresh and honest as anyone we’d seen”. Christopher Walken delivers a mesmerizing performance. Spielberg insists on a French actress for the part of Paula Abagnale to stay true to the story, so he asks his friend Brian De Palma (who lives in Paris) to do tests with French actresses; Spielberg decides to cast Nathalie Baye who played the script girl Joëlle in Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973). When Spielberg sees Jennifer Garner on the TV series Alias, he offers her the part of the call girl Cheryl Ann, in a scene that is shot in just one day.

Filming of the more than 180 scenes is completed in only 52 days, taking place in 147 different locations in Los Angeles, New York and Montreal. According to DiCaprio, "Scenes that we thought would take three days took an afternoon".

For Director of Photography Janusz Kamiński, the film marks a distinct stylistic departure from the grim historical events or sci-fi dystopias in Spielberg’s previous projects. His photography is very straightforward, with no major CG work or other tricks involved. During the scenes of the 60s, the lighting style is very warm, but when we enter the 70s, he tries to make the images flatter and uglier by placing the light source closer to the camera. Kamiński on his "quick and dirty" approach to shoot the film:

“This film is less ‘Spielberg’ than some of his other movies. Steven was very relaxed and interested in working with the actors, and because we were working so fast there was often not enough time to give him a traditional look. There are gorgeously lit scenes in the film, but there are also scenes that, well, just don’t look as good! Once we lit we just had to go with it. I love that method.“

Spielberg takes the opportunity to incorporate several references to (and even clips from) the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964) which was en vogue during that time but is not mentioned in Abagnale’s biography.

The fascinating, Saul Bass-inspired opening title sequence is created by Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas. The "stamp style animation" lasts about 2 minutes 30 seconds and features silhouettes of the main characters acting out the plot, with the Spielberg-typical meteor shower added for fun. It is followed by excerpts from the 1977 episode of the television game show To Tell the Truth that featured Frank Abagnale - with DiCaprio digitally transplanted.

Catch Me If You Can is a critical success, and the real Abagnale reacts positively to it. Abagnale can be seen in a cameo as the French Policeman when Frank is arrested. In another cameo, Max Spielberg can be seen sitting behind DiCaprio during both parts of the airplane scene.

Grossing a worldwide total of $352.1 million, the film is extremely profitable, recouping its $52 million budget six times over. 2002 is a great year for Spielberg, delivering a double salvo of two successful films, Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can.

Film critic James Berardinelli concludes “Catch Me if You Can never takes itself or its subjects too seriously, and contains more genuinely funny material than about 90% of the so-called 'comedies' found in multiplexes these days". He praises John Williams' film score as "more intimate and jazzy than his usual material, evoking (intentionally) Henry Mancini".

Fellow director Guillermo del Toro calls Catch Me If You Can “a masterpiece of timing and grace. Fluid but precise. Built like clockwork and with a huge human heart at its core.”  

Catch Me If You Can is nominated for only two Academy Awards (Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Christopher Walken and Best Music, Original Score for John Williams), winning none. After all, Christopher Walken wins the Screen Actors Guild Award. 

2002 Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, is one of the most outstanding film adaptations based on source material written by Philip K. Dick. The cast includes Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Peter Stormare, Jessica Capshaw, Lois Smith, Tim Blake Nelson, and Max von Sydow.

Spielberg expands Philip K. Dick’s short story The Minority Report to a feature-length theatrical film (its running time turns out to be 145 minutes). His greatest challenge, though, is to transform the story which was first published in 1956 into a more contemporary setting that satisfies both connoisseurs of  Philip K. Dick’s short story and the average audience.

The dystopian story is set in Washington DC and deals with the consequences of a law enforcement system called „PreCrime“ that is authorized to arrest and detain people for murders even before they are committed (or not) - based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called "Precog".

Disguised in a captivating mix of film noir, science fiction, thriller and whodunit, Spielberg shares his critical view of current US politics, i.e. the Bush administration’s activities regarding “homeland security“ and Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.

The film’s multilayered themes examine whether free will can exist if the future is set and “known“ in advance, they also scrutinize the role of media when technological advancements make it ubiquitous. According to Spielberg

„The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing is, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.“

Spielberg's repeated themes such as media-generated mass paranoia (”Everybody runs”) and dysfunctional families are also present in the film.

Before Spielberg steps in, the project is in „turnaround" for many years. Originally, Ronald Shusett (Alien) plans to adapt Philip K. Dick's short story for a sequel of Total Recall (1990). In this version, earth’s population has been moved to Mars. Due to poor oxygen supply in the miners' colonies on Mars, some settlers mutate to the Pre-Cogs from Philip K. Dick's original. However, the project, with prospective director Jan de Bont attached, is eventually cancelled. Novelist Jon Cohen removes all Total Recall elements from his draft. and submits a rewrite which is set in a retro future, featuring a suburb that looks like straight from the 1950s.

This version comes to Tom Cruise’s attention during the filming of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Since their first meeting on the set of Risky Business (1983), Cruise has tried to work for a Spielberg film. After Spielberg exits Rain Man (1988), he has to wait even longer. Finally, Spielberg “greenlights“ Minority Report, after Cruise has pitched the draft to him. However, Cruise has to finish Mission Impossible 2 (2000), and Spielberg directs A.I. - Artificial Intelligence (2001), so another two years pass. 

When Spielberg originally signs on to direct, he plans to have an entirely different supporting cast. He offers the role of Witwer to Matt Damon, Iris Hineman to Meryl Streep, Burgess to Ian McKellen, Agatha to Cate Blanchett, and Lara to Jenna Elfman. However, Streep declines the role, Damon opts out, and the other roles are recast due to the delays.

Spielberg makes the best use of the delays and has Scott Frank revise the draft. He scraps most ideas from Cohen’s drafts but keeps the sequence in the car factory, which is based on a concept by Alfred Hitchcock for North by Northwest (1959) which remained unfilmed due to the high production cost. For Minority Report, the sequence is filmed in a real facility using props such as a welding robot and practical effects.

During pre-production, Spielberg invites 15 experts from various disciplines to a three-days "think tank summit" to learn how daily life might look like in 2054. Production designer Alex McDowell (Fight Club) keeps what is nicknamed the "2054 bible", an 80-page guide listing all the decided upon aspects of the future world: architectural, socio-economical, political, and technological. Some of the film’s technology designs actually become reality (e.g. Multi-touch interfaces, retina scanners, news on tablets and targeted marketing).

For Minority Report, cinematographer Janusz Kamiński creates a unique visual style, shooting the movie with high-speed film, alternating between handheld and Steadicam shots. He utilizes high contrast to create dark colors and shadows (as in film noir) as well as overlit shots with desaturated colors which are achieved by bleach-bypassing the film's negative in post-production.

The film's 14 minute opening sequence, depicting a distorted Precog vision of a murder, is the most complex of any Spielberg film and marks a highlight of Michael Kahn’s work as an editor.

Minority Report is the first film to have an entirely digital production design. „Previz" (a term borrowed from the film's narrative) allows the crew to use Photoshop and 3-D animation programs to create a simulated set, which can be filled with virtual actors to block out shots in advance. Industrial Light & Magic provides most of the stunning visual effects, with DreamWorks-owned PDI responsible for the Spyder robots.

John Williams composes a gripping „black and white score“ taking inspiration from Bernard Herrmann’s work and including film noir elements such as a female singer in the Anne Lively scenes. Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 (commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony) is heard while Anderton “conducts“ his PreCrime investigation, because Anderton is described as a big fan of classical music in the script.

Minority Report is one of the best reviewed films of 2002, being praised for its writing, visuals and themes, but earning some criticism for its „happy end“ which is considered inconsistent (by critics who do not understand the filmmaker’s intention of applying a „false end“ that only exits in the protagonist’s imagination to underline the film’s underlying theme of reality vs. perception).

Roger Ebert calls the film a "masterpiece" and says that when most directors of the period are putting "their trust in technology", Spielberg has already mastered it, and is emphasizing "story and character" while merely using technology as a "workman uses his tools".

Produced by Amblin Entertainment and Cruise/Wagner Productions, Minority Report is distributed by 20th Century Fox (North America) and DreamWorks SKG (International) and turns out to be a huge commercial success, earning over $358 million worldwide against an overall budget of $142 million (including advertising).