In only a few months, Steven Spielberg will make his long-awaited return to the science-fiction genre with the hotly anticipated film Disclosure Day, starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor. The legendary director hasn’t made a sci-fi movie since Ready Player One, which was released eight years ago. In the earliest phase of his career, Spielberg became a household name thanks to sci-fi hits such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the 1990s, Spielberg launched the Jurassic Park franchise, which continues to this day. However, in the early 2000s, he made three sci-fi movies in the span of five years, and two of them starred Tom Cruise. The more successful of the two, War of the Worlds, is currently available to stream on Netflix. But it’ll leave the service at the end of the month.
Released in 2005, five years after A.I. Artificial Intelligence and four years after Minority Report, War of the Worlds was based on the popular book by H.G. Wells, which had famously been adapted into a radio play by Orson Welles many decades prior. Spielberg’s movie was set in contemporary times and served as an allegory for the September 11 terror attacks. The movie grossed over $600 million worldwide and is now Spielberg’s third-biggest sci-fi hit, behind E.T. and The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Also starring Dakota Fanning and Miranda Otto, War of the Worlds was produced on a reported budget of around $130 million and received mostly positive reviews. The movie is now sitting at a “certified fresh” 76% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War of the Worlds delivers on the thrill and paranoia of H.G. Wells’ classic novel while impressively updating the action and effects for modern audiences.”
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Written by Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s Josh Friedman and Spielberg’s Jurassic Park collaborator David Koepp, War of the Worlds isn’t one of the filmmaker’s fan-favorites; audiences have awarded it a rather low 42% score on RT. The filmmaker’s Ready Player One was nearly as successful at the box office, grossing over $570 million globally and earning a similar critics’ score on RT. Disclosure Day, his upcoming movie, also features Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Wyatt Russell, and Colman Domingo. The movie will be released theatrically on June 12.
You only have until January 31 to watch War of the Worlds on Netflix. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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June 29, 2005
- Runtime
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116 Minutes
