Steven Spielberg has said he still intends to direct a horror film, though he has not announced any specific project. In a recent interview with Empire, the director acknowledged that making a horror film has been a long-standing ambition he has not yet pursued.
“I haven’t directed a horror film yet, and I’ve always wanted to, and someday I may,” Spielberg said. He added that seeing strong work in the genre from other filmmakers tends to reduce his immediate motivation to make one himself, noting that exceptional horror from peers “arrests my desire to someday make a really, really scary movie.”
He cited Zach Cragger‘s film Weapons as a recent example of work that had that effect on him.
Spielberg’s history with the genre
While Spielberg has not directed a film he categorises as horror, several of his titles have been noted for frightening sequences. Jaws (1975) is widely credited with establishing the modern summer blockbuster and remains a reference point in discussions of cinematic suspense. Jurassic Park (1993) contains extended sequences involving predatory dinosaurs that have been widely cited for their tension. His 1971 TV movie Duel follows a driver being pursued by an unseen truck driver, and his earlier feature Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) includes alien encounter sequences that carry an unsettling tone.
Spielberg drew a distinction between those films and what he considers a true horror film, describing the genre as requiring a sustained commitment to terror as the primary focus rather than as a component of another type of story.
Current projects
Spielberg’s next film is Disclosure Day, a science fiction feature scheduled for release on June 12. In the same Empire interview, he praised Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune adaptations, describing them as “among my favorite science fiction movies, not just recently, but of all time.”