Marvel and Warner Bros./DC Entertainment have movie slates planned through 2020, but director Steven Spielberg predicts that these superhero films will soon diminish much like Westerns did in the early 1970s.
Spielberg warned two years ago that an "implosion" in the film industry was inevitable, and despite the success of franchise reboot "Jurassic World," which he produced, he's not backing down from that position.
"I still feel that way," the Oscar-winning director told the Associated Press. "We were around when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western. It doesn't mean there won't be another occasion where the Western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns."
Spielberg acknowledged that the superhero genre is "alive and thriving" right now. He also has faith that a young filmmaker is out there waiting to reignite a whole other genre.
"I'm only saying that these cycles have a finite time in popular culture. There will come a day when the mythological stories are supplanted by some other genre that possibly young filmmaker is just thinking about discovering for all of us," he said.
The other problem Spielberg voiced two years ago at the opening of the new USC School of Cinematic Arts building was the struggle to put films in theaters that are not big budget movies. He almost took his own film "Lincoln" to HBO.
"That's the big danger, and there's eventually going to be an implosion - or a big meltdown," he said. "There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm."
Spielberg will release his latest film "Bridge of Spies," starring Tom Hanks, on Oct. 16. He's currently editing his next feature "The BFG," based on the Ronald Dahl novel, which will hit theaters on July 1, 2016.
