It's hard to say with any rationality that Steven Spielberg has really gone anywhere; after all, this is a man who is the producer behind what will be three of this summer's biggest films in "Super 8," "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," and "Cowboys & Aliens." For anyone else in Hollywood, that'd be a career high point.
Spielberg, though, hasn't directed a new film since 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull," the mostly poorly received franchise revival; before that, 2005's "Munich" and "War of the Worlds" were the most recent projects he helmed. And while it's true that his directorial pace had already slowed down once before -- he went four years between Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" -- his late 90s/early 2000s pace was prolific.
Now, the man behind innumerable classics is headed back to the big screen as a director with a new flurry of films, led off by the World War I epic, "War Horse," starring newcomer Jeremy Irvine and based on the book by Michael Morpurgo and the Tony Award-winning play, both of the same name.
Also coming this year will be his "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn," a live action, motion-captured adaptation of the classic comic and cartoon, and then 2012's already-Oscar-frontrunner "Lincoln," a biopic of the former president based on Doris Kearns' Goodwin's famous book.
Here's a synopsis of "War Horse"; below that, check out the trailer and a whole series of first look photos from set and production.
Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War, "War Horse" begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets--British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter--before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man's Land.
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