How many movies has Steven Spielberg directed?

Few directors manage to define their own generation, let alone those that follow. Steven Spielberg has been at the top of his game for most of his career. The filmmaker is credited with ushering in the “New Era of Hollywood,” is one of the most commercially successful directors in history, and will go down as one of the best directors of all time.   

The beloved director has made nearly 50 films since he released his first short, Amblin’ (which shares the name with his co-created studio, Amblin Entertainment), and has been listed as a creative inspiration for everything from movies to video games. Over the years countless directors including Ridley Scott, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Jackson, and Martin Scorsese have listed his work as inspirational to their own.

Though he’s pushing 80, Spielberg is showing no signs of slowing down. The Fabelmans released in 2022, and the filmmaker has at least 3 projects currently in the works.

All the movies Steven Spielberg has directed

The following films are feature-length. Spielberg’s first theatrical release was The Sugarland Express, which, though it failed to gain the critical recognition the burgeoning filmmaker felt he was due, did put him on Universal’s radar. He was tapped for Jaws, and overnight, Spielberg became a household name.

• Firelight (1964)
• Duel (1971)
• Something Evil (1972)
• Savage (1973)
• The Sugarland Express (1974)
• Jaws (1975)
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
• 1941 (1979)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982)
• Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
• The Color Purple (1985)
• Empire of the Sun (1987)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
• Always (1989)
• Hook (1991)
• Jurrassic Park (1993)
• Schindler’s List (1993)
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park
• Amistad (1997)
• Saving Private Ryan (1998)
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
• Minority Report (2002
• Catch Me If You Can (2002)
• The Terminal (2004)
• War of the Worlds (2005)
• Munich (2005)
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
• The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
• War Horse (2011)
• Lincoln (2012)
• Bridge of Spies (2015)
• The BFG (2016)
• The Post (2017)
• Ready Player One (2018)
• West Side Story (2021)
• The Fabelmans (2022)

All Steven Spielberg Short films

Spielberg may have made his first movie, The Last Gun by age 13, but let’s be honest, if we can’t see it, it doesn’t count. Likewise, Fighter Squad (1961) and the unfinished Slipstream (1967) fall under the same umbrella. To be fair, clips of Fighter Squad do appear in the 2017 Spielberg documentary alongside scenes from Escape to Nowhere, but Spielberg doesn’t need to fluff that resume, so we aren’t counting them here.

• Escape to Nowhere (1961) – under the name “Steve Spielberg”
• Amblin’ (1968)
• The Visionary (1990)
• The Unfinished Journey (1999)
• A Timeless Call (2008)
• Marcus Mumford: Cannibal (2022)