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Steven Spielberg’s Space Odyssey
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Steven Spielberg’s Space Odyssey

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The Industry
Apr 18, 2024
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Steven Spielberg’s Space Odyssey
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Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:

Spielberg does Kubrick, Tarantino executes his 10th, Leonardo DiCaprio as Sinatra, Jenna Ortega skips fall, and a magical cactus.

Let’s go!


SPIELBERG’S SPACE ODYSSEY

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Columbia Pictures.

The truth is out there.

Steven Spielberg’s next film is about UFOs. Spielberg has always been obsessed with extraterrestrials.

In his six-decade career, he’s directed some canons in the genre:

  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

  • E.T. (1982)

  • War of the Worlds (2005)

Spielberg’s personal odyssey with space and cinema was ignited by his first screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Spielberg recounted:

"I came out the other end of that picture much higher than any of my friends who had taken mind-altering substances. I went in there clean as a whistle. And I came out of there altered myself."

The cinematic power of film and the space genre became forever meshed in the mind of Spielberg, who became lifelong friends with Kubrick.

Spielberg remembered:

“The way the [2001] story is told is antithetical to the way we were accustomed to seeing stories… Kubrick would tell me, the last couple years of his life when we were talking about the form, he kept saying, ‘I want to change the form. I want to make a movie that changes the form.’ And I said, ‘Well, didn’t you with ‘2001?’”

Spielberg’s first encounter with an alien form of cinema was when he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

This utter fascination spurred more than mere homages to Kubrick. Spielberg’s first two space narratives tap into the same joy and wonder of encountering extraterrestrials that he must have felt during his inaugural 2001 screening.

While no plot details about the new UFO project have been released, David Koepp (writer: War of the Worlds) is penning the screenplay from Spielberg’s original idea.

We can’t wait to see what they come up with.

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