Steven Spielberg’s Universal Legacy Immortalized with Dedicated Theater and Secret Film Reveal
If anyone has earned a movie theater to be dedicated in their honor, it’s Steven Spielberg.
The legendary director was feted on Thursday night at Universal Studios, where a state-of-the-art theater was dedicated to him. On hand were NBCUniversal Entertainment Chairwoman Donna Langley and a slew of A-list stars, there to celebrate his legacy. “It’s not just a place that is founded on his extraordinary legacy, but it is a place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers, of storytellers who are going to take this company into the next 100 years, and the 100 after that,” Langley said.
The Steven Spielberg Theater is situated within The Commons, Universal’s new 84,000-square-foot building, designed as an homage to the roots of filmmaking by resembling a spinning film reel. It’s part of an eco-friendly redesign, called the Campus Project, in which Spielberg was involved.
Seth Rogen, Colman Domingo, Dakota Fanning, Jeff Goldblum, John Travolta, Vin Diesel, and writer/directors Ava DuVernay, The Daniels, Jon M. Chu, and Kevin Williamson were on hand. So, too, were Goonies stars Ke Huy Quan and Jeff Cohen. Spielberg’s legacy is such that you could single out just his work for Universal, and you’d have one of the most remarkable runs in movie history. Spielberg is credited with almost single-handedly creating the summer blockbuster era thanks to his Universal thriller Jaws, which premiered on June 20, 1975, and went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time at that point, with a domestic box office gross of $260.7 million. Going forward, summer would be the season that studios trotted out some of their biggest, splashiest tentpoles.
Spielberg has directed more than 30 feature films, including some of the most iconic titles of all time. For Universal alone, those include two sci-fi game changers, his 1982 blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and his 1993 stunner Jurassic Park. He followed Jurassic Park with another film for Universal, his 1994 drama, Schindler’s List, which won him his first Academy Award for Best Picture. He’s currently promoting the seventh film in the franchise, Jurassic World: Rebirth, which he produced and which opens on July 2.
At the dedication, Spielberg gave guests a big surprise—he revealed the first footage from his secret event film, his first genre film since his 2018 adaptation Ready Player One. All that’s currently known about the film is that it involves, in some capacity, aliens, and it stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Colin Firth, and Eve Hewson, among others. The footage showed Blunt and O’Connor on the run from what appeared to be government agents.
Spielberg and Universal’s relationship has been a long one, spanning more than 50 years, and in that time, he has seen the studio change corporate ownership while the industry itself has continued to change and evolve. “It feels like we keep getting remarried, but tonight is probably more like a bris,” he quipped. He called the current era of Universal a “rebirth,” adding this: “I mean the rebirth of the belief in the people that work as a family, as a community, as a team to make good things happen,” he said. He closed his remarks with this promise: “I’m making a lot of movies and I have no plans…ever…to retire.”
Featured image: Martha’s Vineyard, MA – 1975: (L-R) [unidentified], Director Steven Spielberg, camera operator Michael Chapman and cinematographer Bill Butler on the set of the Universal Pictures production of ‘Jaws’ in 1975 in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
