Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans Sets A 2022 Release Date

"Catch Me If You Can." "Jaws." "Schindler's List." "West Side Story." The "Indiana Jones" franchise. Director, writer, producer, and all-around innovator Steven Spielberg is getting a big-screen story about his own childhood — and who better to tell it than the King of Entertainment himself? 

"The Fabelmans" is Spielberg's coming-of-age drama, loosely based on the filmmaker's early life and filmmaking trajectory, and we've now learned that it's set for a theatrical pre-Thanksgiving 2022 release. The feature is a tag-team effort from Universal Pictures and Amblin, already began shooting in July, and is scheduled to drop on November 23, 2022.

Taking a semi-autobiographical bent, "The Fabelmans" is set in Arizona, where Spielberg grew up before moving to California to study film at CSU Long Beach. Michelle Williams ("My Week With Marilyn"), Seth Rogen ("An American Pickle"), Paul Dano ("There Will Be Blood"), and Gabriel LaBelle star as influential figures in the "Munich" director's life. Williams and Dano are set to play parents inspired by Spielberg's own, while Rogen plays a callback avatar to Spielberg's favorite uncle. Julia Butters, that button-nosed pro who stole the show in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon A Time Hollywood," will play the role of his sister, Anne. At the epicenter is LaBelle, the newcomer who plays ambitious young storyteller Sammy, and the movie centers around a cinephile's creative path from film fan to one of the most consistently high-grossing directors of all time.

"The Fablemans" is penned by Spielberg along with frequent collaborator, Tony Kushner ("Angels in America"), the prolific playwright dubbed the "Oracle of the West Side" by The New York Times. The pair have a history together, having worked on Spielberg's 2005 action drama "Munich" screenplay (along with Eric R. Roth) and his 2021 historical drama "Lincoln," for which Kushner was nominated for a 2012 best adapted screenplay Oscar (which went to Chris Terrio for "Argo"). Spielberg and Kushner also co-produce "The Fablemans" alongside Kristie Macosko Krieger. 

Spielberg's creative development is now a storied history among film lovers: making his first films as a young Boy Scout, crafting a 40-minute war picture at the age of 13 that won a statewide contest, and writing/directing a two-plus-hour indie in 1963 that served as the progenitor for what would later become "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (the movie even got a screening at the local movie theater) — all before the family's relocation to the Sunshine State. There's plenty to mine from, and who doesn't want to see the birth of a visionary?

"The Fabelmans" is set to release November 23, 2022.