Then 34-year-old director Steven Spielberg reportedly drew on
his own experiences as an unusually imaginative, often-lonely
child of divorce for his science-fiction classic E.T. the Extra-
Terrestrial, which was released on June 11, 1982.

For Spielberg, E.T. marked a return to territory he had first
visited with the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(1977).

E.T. had stupendous success at the box office, eventually
raking in some $435 million (it was re-released in 1985 and
a special 20th-anniversary edition was issued in 2002).

Steven Spielberg with E.T.

The original series ran from September 8, 1966 to June 3,
1969 on NBC. 

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey had its
world theatrical premiere on April 2, 1968.

Kubrick, whose 1964 Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove had been
popular with audiences and critics alike, was intrigued by
science fiction but felt the genre rarely produced interesting
films.

Filming required the construction of a giant centrifuge to serve
as the spaceship’s interior and numerous expensive visual
effects, including a groundbreaking psychedelic sequence near
the end of the film so complex that staff referred to it as the
“Manhattan Project.” Kubrick is said to have removed over 15
minutes from the final cut, which nonetheless ran well over
2 hours.

On March 31, 1999, the writing and directing sibling team of
Lana and Lilly Wachowski release their second film, the mind-
blowing science-fiction blockbuster The Matrix.

Later films include Cloud Atlas (2012) and Jupiter Ascending
(2015). A sequel to The Matrix Revolutions, The Matrix
Resurrections, was released in 2021.         
        
        
        
        
        
        
Lilly and Lana Wachowsk.

On July 2, 1997, the science fiction-comedy movie Men in Black,
starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, opened in theaters
around the United States. The film grossed more than $250
million in America alone and helped establish the former sitcom
star Will Smith as one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men.