The Fabelmans

Details

Release year: 2022

Storyline

Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.

Top credits

Awards

0 wins & 7 nominations

Did you know

• During filming, the cast gained access to home movies, photographs, and recollections from Steven Spielberg's family's past to learn what they were like and how to portray the fictionalized versions of them (The Fabelman family) on screen, while making them feel fresh and original. Paul Dano reflected: "It was overwhelming and it was sort of a heavy cloak to bear because we were with someone who was having a big experience everyday, revisiting and reworking through a part of their life...For somebody like Steven to share that much of himself with us---with the audience too---it was really a profound experience."

• Steven Spielberg said his parents had been "nagging" him to put them on the big screen prior to their deaths. "They were actually nagging me, 'When are you going to tell that story about our family, Steve?' And so this was something they were very enthusiastic about," he said. He also shared what finally prompted him to make The Fabelmans: "I started seriously thinking, if I had to make one movie I haven't made yet, something that I really want to do on a very personally atomic level, what would that be? And there was only one story I really wanted to tell." He also said The Fabelmans is "the first coming-of-age story I've ever told." "My life with my mom and dad taught me a lesson, which I hope this film in a small way imparts," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "Which is, when does a young person in a family start to see his parents as human beings? In my case, because of what happened between the ages of 7 and 18, I started to appreciate my mom and dad not as parents but as real people."

• Steven Spielberg did nearly abandon filmmaking in real life for a period of time. But, not because of what happened with his parents: the 16-year-old Spielberg had a crisis of confidence after seeing David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). "When the film was over, I wanted to not be a director anymore," he said in an HBO documentary, "because the bar was too high. "I had such a profound reaction to the filmmaking, and I went back and saw the film a week later," he added. "I saw the film a week after that, and I saw the film a week after that, and I realized that there was no going back. This was going to be what I was going to do or I was going to die trying."

Box Office

Gross (Domestic): $17,348,945

Opening Weekend (Domestic): $161,579 (2022-11-13)

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