Director Steven Spielberg Is Quietly Planning Another Movie About Aliens

Steven Spielberg is one of the most influential and celebrated directors of all time. He helped define the blockbuster, established the look and feel of '80s genre fare, and gave us the best (and possibly only well-shot) big-budget studio musical of the last decade. But despite getting his start in science fiction, Spielberg has mostly distanced himself from the genre in the past decade or so. (Yes, we are choosing to ignore the existence of "Ready Player One.")

Still, Spielberg has remained an ardent fan of the genre, praising recent gems such as "Godzilla Minus One" and proclaiming his fandom for Denis Villeneuve's "Dune: Part Two." Perhaps this has rekindled a passion for sci-fi in 77-year-old Spielberg, seeing as he's now getting ready to return to one of his favorite subjects — aliens.

According to Variety, Spielberg is likely going to "make his next project a UFO film based on his own original idea." David Koepp is writing the screenplay, according to the outlet's sources.

Spielberg's work in movies about aliens is unparalleled. Between "Close Encounters of the Third Kind, "E.T," the underrated "Taken" (one of the first miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel), and "War of the Worlds," he's made the case for being our best director when it comes to alien movies. And that's not counting when he returned to that topic in the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, or even the many alien movies he never got to make.

Spielberg has been in love with outer space since his father showed him a Perseid meteor shower when he was six years old, and he's never let that go. After going fully autobiographical in "The Fabelmans," the idea of Spielberg's next movie is more exciting than ever before. That he seems to be going back to space is already very intriguing; add the fact that his new project is based on an original idea, and our anticipation is already through the roof.

What really seals the deal is David Koepp's involvement. After all, Koepp worked with Spielberg on the masterpiece "Jurassic Park" and is a major reason why the next "Jurassic World" movie is so exciting. Sure, Koepp also collaborated with Spielberg and George Lucas on "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," but let's focus on the positives here. (Also, that movie is better than you remember.)

Spielberg's early science fiction movies were rather biographical, with the filmmaker infusing them with elements from his own childhood and relationship with his parents. Seeing him return to the genre post "The Fabelmans" — after having worked (or not) through that time and those feelings — makes it likely his return to alien movies will be quite different, and that is worth looking forward to.