Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks on The Post, fastest film director has ever made, and sci-fi movie Ready Player One
The 71-year-old filmmaker is well known for having projects overlap, most disconcertingly when he worked simultaneously on Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park. His latest two-step is a classic journalism tale and a virtual-reality spectacular
Steven Spielberg talks quickly, and works even faster. When we meet in a London hotel, the director of such classics as Jaws and Schindler’s List is full of zappy energy. His latest film, The Post, was shot inside nine months, he says, during the lengthy post-production for Ready Player One, his sci-fi feature due in late March.
“We didn’t sacrifice quality,” he says. “If I had another 12 months, it would’ve been the same movie. I really believe that.”
The script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer was on the “Black List” of the top unproduced screenplays, circulated in Hollywood, in 2016. Then Spielberg, in the year Donald Trump entered the White House, decided the time was ripe to make a story about free speech. He calls it “instantaneous” filmmaking, far removed from the way most of his films come together – he usually lets projects percolate.
“In the entire span of my 49 years professionally directing, I never had a film come together in this way,” says the 71-year-old.
Spielberg is well known for doubling down. “I’ve overlapped a lot. The biggest overlap was Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park. That was the most disconcerting overlap I’ve ever had in my life. It was almost too much to bear.”
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The Holocaust and a dinosaur theme park – not exactly complementary subject matter. The same goes for his 2015 cold war drama Bridge of Spies and his Roald Dahl adaptation The BFG , which arrived in cinemas within six months of each other. No other Hollywood director works with this speed.