Netflix Is Losing A Tom Hanks Classic Next Month

As the single most commercially successful director in the history of the industry, not to mention the only one that’s ever seen their filmography earn a combined total of over $10 billion at the box office, it feels incredibly reductive to boil the career of Steven Spielberg down to two styles of filmmaking.

However, there’s definitely a clear line that’s been drawn over the last 45 years between his populist, crowd-pleasing blockbusters and his more mature, thoughtful prestige dramas. The likes of Jaws, the Indiana Jones franchise, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Ready Player One and more occupy the former territory, while Schindler’s List, The Color Purple, War Horse, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies and The Post are just some of the few that favor brains over brawn.

That being said, there’ve also been numerous films where Spielberg has balanced the best of both worlds, delivering a string of gripping set pieces wrapped around an engaging narrative that offers no shortage of weighty thematic subtext. We’re talking the likes of Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, of course, Saving Private Ryan.

The depictions of World War II’s battlefields are nothing short of jaw-dropping, but at the end of the day, it’s a daring rescue story about a group of soldiers trying to do the right thing, starring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore and more. Saving Private Ryan was recently dominating Netflix’s most-watched list for weeks, but after only being added to the library at the start of last month, it’s already on the way out, with the movie leaving the platform on May 1st, and it might well end up on Paramount+ given that the studio handled the theatrical distribution – internationally, at least – back in 1998.