All of Steven Spielberg’s biggest box office hits have one thing in common

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Steven Spielberg has made his name synonymous with cinema. Even from his earliest contributions, he helped change the way we look at movies. “Jaws” literally reshaped the box office foreverbecoming the first true summer blockbuster as we know it. Since then, Spielberg has had many, many success stories, from blockbuster adventures like Raiders of the Lost Ark to military epics like Saving Private Ryan. But each of Spielberg’s biggest hits has one important thing in common.

Spielberg is the highest-grossing director of all time at the box office. This does not happen by accident. And he only has one $1 billion hit. Such success is achieved by the consistency that he has been able to maintain for more than five decades. But more than anything he did, audiences showed up whenever Spielberg dabbled in the sci-fi genre – so much so that all six of his biggest films fall under the sci-fi umbrella. Here’s the breakdown:

1. “Jurassic Park” – $1.05 billion worldwide

2. “Alien” – $797 million worldwide

3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – $786 million worldwide

4. Lost World: Jurassic Park – $618 million worldwide

5. “Ready Player One” – $607 million worldwide

6. War of the Worlds – $606 million worldwide

During his career, Spielberg directed eight science fiction films of varying quality so far this year – his latest song “Disclosure Day” brought it to nine. 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001’s Artificial Intelligence AI also fall into this category. The only one that wasn’t a complete success in theaters, hampered by its big budget, was AI. Other than that, Spielberg’s forays into sci-fi have generally fared better than any other genre he’s dabbled in, and it’s not particularly close.

While I’m not going to adjust every film in the director’s filmography for inflation to illustrate this point, Close Encounters of the Third Kind grossed $340 million worldwide. If we adjust that number for inflation, that would be roughly $1.8 billion in today’s dollars. Of course, this movie didn’t compete with streaming services or even VHS at the time, so it’s not a comparison to today’s blockbusters.

However, it does help demonstrate that yes, audiences do enjoy Steven Spielberg making sci-fi movies. “ET” has held the top spot at the box office longer than any other film in history. At the time of its release, it was the highest grossing film of all time. Spielberg would once again find himself with the biggest hit ever when Jurassic Park came out in 1993. It remains his biggest theatrical hit and the only one to cross the $1 billion mark thanks to a 2013 20th anniversary re-release.

Jurassic Park also changed cinema foreverthanks to an innovative combination of CGI and practical effects. It also started a franchise that grossed nearly $7 billion worldwide, and Spielberg also directed the first sequel, The Lost World. Despite this film’s mixed reputation, it is another one of his biggest hits.

Exactly the same Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a monster hit, as much as you hated it. The reputation of this film is completely bad and remains so to this day. However, it is the third largest film in Spielberg’s illustrious career. Yes, people hated that he brought aliens into the indie world, but that’s what made it sci-fi. It also helped make it a big hit.

There are also “War of the Worlds”, which was almost ruined by Tom Cruise and his off-screen antics. But even the media’s intense scrutiny of one of the world’s biggest stars couldn’t dissuade audiences from watching Spielberg’s H.G. Wells classic. Spielberg previously worked with Cruise on Minority Report, which was also a major hit, grossing $358 million worldwide.

Then there’s Ready Player One, a film that doesn’t often rank high in Spielberg’s overall filmography. And yet, it grossed more than $600 million worldwide, with a massive turnout internationally. This was done in 2018, which became a record year at the box office in general. That’s no small thing, and it’s a reminder that no matter what conversations there are online around a given movie, those conversations don’t always reflect the broader sentiment in the real world.

Another interesting note: of Spielberg’s six top-grossing films, five of them were directed by the great John Williams. The only exception was “Ready Player One” with Alan Silvestri’s soundtrack. So, if we limit ourselves to the top five, these films have science fiction and Williams in common. It makes sense, given that Williams is the highest-grossing film composer of all time.

That’s not to mention Spielberg’s career as a producer, either. Let’s not forget that he produced all of the Jurassic World movies, as well as the Transformers franchise, as well as Men in Black and Back to the Future. That’s an extra billion in box office receipts. Science fiction and Spielberg are more often than not a recipe for success.

You can grab Steven Spielberg: The Spotlight Collection in 4K from Amazon.