Steven Spielberg is making a UFO movie for the first time in almost 50 years – and we're stoked.
Per Variety, Spielberg is making a "UFO film based on his own idea." David Koepp, the screenwriter of Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park is reportedly set to pen the script. No other details have been released, but we'll be waiting patiently with our tin foil hats on.
The filmmaker hasn't made a proper UFO flick since 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which cemented itself in pop culture history as one of the most influential alien pics of all time. Richard Dreyfuss starred as Roy Neary, an ordinary blue-collar worker from Indiana whose life turns upside down when he encounters a UFO.
The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, taking home the Oscar for Best Cinematography and a Special Achievement Academy Award for Sound Effects Editing. It also gave us that infamous sculpting-a-mountain-out-of-mashed-potatoes-scene that was later parodied by Weird Al Yankovic in his 1989 comedy UHF (which is way more important than an Oscar in my opinion.)
Spielberg has had UFOs on the brain recently, telling Stephen Colbert in 2023 that it’s "mathematically impossible that we’re the only intelligent species in the cosmos" but that it "almost seems impossible that anybody would visit us from 400 million light years from here" (via The A.V. Club).
For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2024 and beyond, or, skip right to the good stuff with our list of movie release dates.