The Big Picture · Discussion · Interview
March 23, 2026/ 67 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey opens with a box-office check-in on 'Project Hail Mary,' then plays his South by Southwest conversation with Steven Spielberg, the director's first big interview ahead of 'Disclosure Day' (June 12). They cover six decades of work: his sci-fi turn, UFOs, blocking, and the Western he still wants to make.
18 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Box-office check-in: ‘Project Hail Mary’ opens bigSean, solo, before the interview
Opened to $80.6M domestic, $140.9M worldwide: the biggest non-franchise opening since 'Oppenheimer' ($82.5M in 2023). It got an A CinemaScore, a 77 on Metacritic, and pulled over 55% of its US gross from premium large formats and IMAX. Sean reads it as proof of his 'familiar but new' thesis: a Ryan Gosling sci-fi that invites 'Close Encounters' and 'E.T.' comparisons, and a win for Amazon MGM as it tries to become a full-service studio.
Steven Spielberg at South by Southwest
The peg for the whole conversation: Spielberg's first UFO film in nearly 50 years, out June 12, and a rare contemporary-set movie for him. He wrote a 50-page story in 2023, then handed it to David Koepp, who wrote the script; Spielberg kept a story credit. He says it moves fast and reckons with the social and theological dislocation that real evidence of alien contact would cause, though he insists it isn't a lethal disruption.
The movie he wanted to make before 'Jaws.' No studio would fund a 'UFO movie' (they heard 'National Enquirer') until 'Jaws' hit and they opened the vaults. J. Allen Hynek, who'd quit the Air Force's Project Blue Book, consulted and introduced him to people who'd had encounters. Turns 50 in 2027.
He didn't know he had a hit until the Dallas preview: a man walked out and vomited in the lobby during the raft death, then came back and took his seat. The malfunctioning mechanical shark, he says, made the film better; John Williams's score made it work at all.
His most joyful shoot and, he says, the film that made him want kids. Shot in continuity for $10M so the child actors could grow into the roles; he co-parented Drew Barrymore afterward and still texts her. If aliens asked to see one of his films, this is the one.
He didn't want to remake the 1953 George Pal film, which he thought was already great, until 9/11 gave him a metaphor to resurrect it around. Tom Cruise insisted on arriving when Spielberg did each morning to map out the day.
Turns 25 in 2026. One of only two films on which he has sole screenwriting credit, even though the project didn't originate with him. On AI the technology, he's for it across many disciplines but against it replacing a creative individual; he's never used it on a film.
Cited among the shoots that produced lasting friendships with the cast.
One of his few future-set films; most of his work, he notes, lives in the past because he's drawn 'like a magnet' to history.
Not a single storyboard: the kind of intuition-led shoot he loves, where he wakes up knowing the page count but not yet how he'll cover it.
Also shot without storyboards, mostly in continuity. Tom Hanks's scene crying in the crater is one he names as having humbled him on set.
'$40 million of therapy DreamWorks paid for.' Nothing more personal; he'd show up knowing where the camera needed to be without knowing why, in 'deep communion' with his younger self. He grew close to Michelle Williams afterward.
His first theatrical feature. He wanted to make 'Close Encounters' even before directing it.
The truck chase comes up as an example of a big, complicated set piece. His answer to how he knows it's working: only when the audience tells him.
Anthony Hopkins's summation to the Supreme Court is one of the performances he says humbled him.
Daniel Day-Lewis's four-minute speech on the 13th Amendment (two moving shots and one cutaway to Seward) left Spielberg crying in the next room. Day-Lewis, still in character, found him and put his arms around him. He still calls Spielberg 'Skipper.'
The humbling that followed 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters,' his example of the 'sine wave' of the business, up and down.
His pick for a film that should be rediscovered: a remake of the 1943 'A Guy Named Joe,' with Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, and John Goodman, and Audrey Hepburn's final screen role. He used to screen it for girlfriends: if they didn't cry at the end, he wouldn't see them again.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Box-office context and comparisons OppenheimerBarbieGravityInterstellarThe MartianAvatarI Am LegendUsScream 7The Housemaid
The rest of the year and Amazon MGM's slate HoppersThe OdysseyWerwulfMercyCrime 101The Sheep DetectivesIs God IsMasters of the UniverseHow to Rob a BankVerityI Play RockyArtificial
Ryan Gosling, generational star The Fall GuyBlade Runner 2049The NotebookLa La LandDriveCrazy, Stupid, Love.First ManThe Gray ManStar Wars: Starfighter
Films that shaped him FantasiaThe Greatest Show on EarthDestination MoonA Trip to the MoonThe War of the WorldsLawrence of ArabiaA Guy Named JoeTwo for the RoadIt's a Wonderful Life
Blocking and craft he points students to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?The GraduateCasablanca
Contemporary films he admires SinnersOne Battle After AnotherHamnetTrain DreamsThe Secret Agent
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The Jackie Gleason ShowYour Show of ShowsThe Milton Berle ShowDragnetM Squad
Games / social FIFA World Cup Launch EditionInstagramTikTok
Ads TremfayaState FarmVolkswagenNetflixBoar's HeadWhite Claw