(Credits: Far Out / DreamWorks Pictures/ Paramount Pictures)
Sun 13 April 2025 15:45, UK
If Steven Spielberg signs on to direct a movie, it automatically becomes a Steven Spielberg movie, regardless of who was involved beforehand, which is par for the course for one of the best in the business. With Saving Private Ryan, the downside was that the project’s originators were left on the outside looking in.
It can’t be said it didn’t work wonders for the director’s incendiary epic, which became the highest-grossing World War II movie ever released, won him a second Academy Award for ‘Best Director’, and was egregiously snubbed for ‘Best Picture’ in favour of Shakespeare in Love in an upset that still hasn’t been forgotten or forgiven.
With Spielberg at the helm, Saving Private Ryan evolved into the film it became. The story was already in place, but it was his approach to crafting the set pieces, favouring authenticity, and shooting sequences with a looser and more improvisational style that turned it into a masterpiece and the benchmark by which all future World War II films will be judged.
Unlike Mark Gordon and Gary Levinsohn, he wasn’t in on the ground floor, though. The producers founded their Mutual Film Company banner specifically to develop Robert Rodat’s screenplay, which impressed Paramount enough for the studio to snap up the script and set Michael Bay as the director.
When he dropped out, Saving Private Ryan ended up in front of Tom Hanks, who brought it to Spielberg because they were actively searching for something to make together. Once the A-list duo had signed on, the filmmaker doubled down by producing through his DreamWorks Pictures company, which cast Gordon and Levinsohn out into the cold.
While they retained a ceremonial producing credit and a lump sum payment for their efforts, they lost all creative input, equity, and potential percentage points on Saving Private Ryan. They’d spent a year and a half working on the film, and they were the ones who got Paramount – and ultimately Hanks and Spielberg on board – but the pair only visited the set a couple of times and didn’t have any say in the production.
“You just know going in what the score is,” Levinsohn admitted to the Los Angeles Times. “I guess it’s unspoken that when you hire Steven Spielberg, you’re not going to be on the set making decisions.” They would have been entitled to be angry about it, but neither man had any grievances with being exiled from a soon-to-be classic they’d developed.
“The movie is one of the most impressive pieces of work I’ve ever seen,” Gordon offered. “Steven was inclusive and gracious and enormously solicitous in terms of the development of the screenplay. If we hadn’t been there with the script, the movie wouldn’t have existed. So, we feel very proud of that.”
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