🎧 Cruise, Spielberg & the Couch: ‘War of the Worlds’ 20 Years Later

A blockbuster, a media circus and one very unfortunate piece of daytime TV history. But does the movie hold up?

WORLDS APART Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise on the set of 2005’s War of the Worlds, the last movie these two industry titans ever made together. (Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection)

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In the spring of 2005, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg were riding high as collaborators. Their first film together, Minority Report, had been a huge hit in the summer of 2002, grossing more than $358 million worldwide. As the story goes, the pair quickly wanted to work together again — and when Cruise visited Spielberg on the set of the director’s other 2002 release, Catch Me If You Can, they discussed three different projects, including an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds. “We looked at each other, and the lights went on,” Cruise said at the time. “As soon as I heard it, I said, ‘Oh my God! War of the Worlds — absolutely.’ That was it.”

By most accounts, production on the project went smoothly. “Having known each other for many, many years, this has brought a whole new evolution to our relationship as director-actor,” Spielberg said back then, before calling Cruise an “intelligent, creative partner” who “brings such great ideas to the set that we just spark each other.”

“I love working with Tom Cruise,” Spielberg added.

Then came the couch. 👇 (Click on image for link to play)

War of the Worlds opened on June 29, 2005, earning a robust $77 million over the four-day July 4th holiday weekend en route to more than $600 million worldwide. In early 2006, it received three Oscar nominations for sound and visual effects. But it was everything going on around the promotion of the movie, as well as the surprising content of the film itself, that makes War of the Worlds such a fascinating hit to look back on 20 years later. It’s one of Spielberg’s darkest movies, heavily influenced by 9/11 as well as the Iraq War, which had reached some of its bloodiest conflicts by the time the film was released. But it’s also the project Cruise was promoting when he jumped on Oprah’s couch and, a little over three weeks later, announced his engagement to Katie Holmes. This media circus threatened to overshadow the movie, and by some accounts, reportedly fractured Spielberg and Cruise’s friendship for years.

War of the Worlds has felt somewhat forgotten as a result. But when Christopher Rosen and I looked back at the film for this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, we found a whole lot to celebrate, from Cruise and Dakota Fanning’s maybe-career-best performances to some of the most dazzling — and chilling — action set pieces of Spielberg’s career.

In honor of the July 4th holiday weekend, in which Jurassic World Rebirth will attempt to be the box office king this time around, we’ve got a look back at one of the unlikeliest summer blockbuster hits of the modern age. (Stream it yourself on Paramount+!) Want more flashback episodes, or to share your own story from Cruise’s ill-fated media blitz of 2005? I’m all ears: katey@theankler.com