Let’s talk about Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg’s The Fabelmans has now been released on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray, making its availability complete. The question is why was this film that was presumed early on to be the year’s film to beat at the Oscars was such a flop at the box office, and why has Spielberg’s early chances of winning his third Best Directing Oscar fizzled?

The film opened on November 23, 2022, the day before Thanksgiving, not traditionally a good day for opening a movie but even so its weekend grosses were much lower than expected despite generally favorable reviews. The box-office only got worse, causing Spielberg to allow release of the film to video on demand just three weeks later.

The film was pretty much ignored at year-end critics’ awards, although it did pick up a Best Director win for Spielberg from the National Board of Review, which gave their Best Picture award to Top Gun: Maverick. It then went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama and Best Director but stumbled badly with BAFTA, which nominated it for just one award, its Original Screenplay by Spielberg and Tony Kushner.

The BAFTA snub didn’t hurt its chances with Oscar since the Oscar nominations were already in, though not yet tabulated, when the BAFTA nominations were announced. Expectations still ran high for Spielberg who was favored to win the DGA (Director’s Guild of America) award for the fourth time following The Color Purple, Schindler’s List, and Saving Private Ryan. Alas, he lost the DGA award to the Daniels, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Spielberg’s film, which had been the Oscar favorite on paper for much of 2022, came in with 7 Oscar nominations following Everything Everywhere All at Once with 11, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Banshees of Inisherin with 9 each, and Elvis with 8. Its nominations were for Best Picture, Directing, Actress (Michelle Willliams), Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch), Original Screenplay, Production Design, and Original Score. Its best hope for a win was for Spielberg as Director but with the one-two punch of not securing a BAFTA nomination and losing the DGA, it now appears that the film may go home empty-handed.

The evening following Spielberg’s loss at the DGA, the BAFTAs gave their Best Director award to Edward Berger for All Quiet on the Western Front which also won for Best Picture and Best Film Not in the English Language while The Banshees of Inisherin won, as expected, for Best British Film.

So why the general indifference to The Fabelmans?

I think it starts with the fact that the film was expected to be the one to beat. That puts a high burden on any film. Although expertly made, it didn’t elicit the passion that other films this year as diverse as All Quiet on the Western Front, The Banshees of Inisherin, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, and Everything Everywhere All at Once have.

Spielberg, however, isn’t quite ready to rest on his laurels. Although he doesn’t have any film as director lined up, he currently has 17 films either in post-production or development as a producer or executive producer including the upcoming musical version of The Color Purple scheduled for release next Christmas.

For the record, though, Spielbrg has laurels in spades that he could rest on if he wanted to. He has a record 13 DGA nominations, 3 wins, and a career achievement as well as 10 Oscar nominations for directing, 2 wins for directing, 12 nominations for producing, one win for producing, and the Thalberg award for producing from AMPAS.

His DGA nominations were for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Schindler’s List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, Lincoln, West Side Story, and The Fabelmans. He won for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

The four films for which Spielberg was nominated for the DGA award but not Oscar were Jaws, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, and Amistad. The lack of nominations for both Jaws and The Color Purple were major shocks. In both cases, he lost the nomination to the director of a foreign language film, Federico Fellini for Amarcord over Jaws, and Akira Kurosawa for Ran over The Color Purple.

1985’s The Color Purple is tied with 1977’s The Turning Point as one of the two films with the most Oscar nominations without a single win.

Spielberg’s 12 nominations for producing were for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, Letters from Iwo Jima. War Horse, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, The Post, West Side Story, and The Fabelmans. He directed all of them except for Letters from Iwo Jima which was directed by Clint Eastwood.