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Sphere

  • 1998
  • PG-13
  • 2h 14m
IMDb RATING
6.1/10
115K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
4,279
1,081
Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sharon Stone in Sphere (1998)
Home Video Trailer from Warner Home Video
Play trailer0:31
1 Video
65 Photos
Psychological DramaPsychological ThrillerMysterySci-FiThriller

A spaceship is discovered under three hundred years' worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.A spaceship is discovered under three hundred years' worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.A spaceship is discovered under three hundred years' worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.

  • Director
    • Barry Levinson
  • Writers
    • Michael Crichton
    • Kurt Wimmer
    • Stephen Hauser
  • Stars
    • Dustin Hoffman
    • Sharon Stone
    • Samuel L. Jackson
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.1/10
    115K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    4,279
    1,081
    • Director
      • Barry Levinson
    • Writers
      • Michael Crichton
      • Kurt Wimmer
      • Stephen Hauser
    • Stars
      • Dustin Hoffman
      • Sharon Stone
      • Samuel L. Jackson
    • 362User reviews
    • 81Critic reviews
    • 35Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 nominations total

    Videos1

    Sphere
    Trailer 0:31
    Sphere

    Photos65

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    Top cast12

    Edit
    Dustin Hoffman
    Dustin Hoffman
    • Norman
    Sharon Stone
    Sharon Stone
    • Beth
    Samuel L. Jackson
    Samuel L. Jackson
    • Harry
    Peter Coyote
    Peter Coyote
    • Barnes
    Liev Schreiber
    Liev Schreiber
    • Ted
    Queen Latifah
    Queen Latifah
    • Fletcher
    Marga Gómez
    • Jane Edmunds
    Huey Lewis
    Huey Lewis
    • Helicopter Pilot
    Bernard Hocke
    Bernard Hocke
    • Seaman
    James Pickens Jr.
    James Pickens Jr.
    • O.S.S.A. Instructor
    Michael Keys Hall
    Michael Keys Hall
    • O.S.S.A. Official
    Ralph Tabakin
    • O.S.S.A. Official
    • Director
      • Barry Levinson
    • Writers
      • Michael Crichton
      • Kurt Wimmer
      • Stephen Hauser
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews362

    6.1115.4K
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    Featured reviews

    dave fitz

    Read the book first

    Most times when a novel is made into a film, you can follow the story without having to read the book. Sphere has a very strange and complex story. If you haven't read the book first, the movie will be hard to follow.

    The movie follows the book pretty closely. Barry Levinson directs his 2nd Crichton adaptation, following Disclosure. There is a terrific superstar cast. Dustin Hoffman is a legend and has made several great movies with Levinson. Samuel L. Jackson, always fun to watch, is one of the top actors of today. The sexy Sharon Stone here continues to prove how good of an actress she is.

    Sphere is a very strange, but entertaining movie. I do reccomend reading the book beforehand, though.
    8farhan_qu

    A fairly decent Crichton flick!

    After reading many users' mixed comments on the movie..i can't help but feel that a majority have underrated the film. True it could have been better, especially in the latter half, but having read the book first, i did not feel it actually falling off midway like the way other viewers have described it. People who have read the novel will acknowledge that the movie does follow the novel fairly closely. Thus comments about Hoffman's role and the ending are unfair, since i feel they are the closest big-screen reproductions of one of Crichton's best works. I feel Stone's character was the role followed the weakest.

    Definitely the giant squid thrills are insufficient (note that Crichton devoted a good part of his novel describing encounters with 'the monster'). I guess animation artists were short budgeted...though the film as a whole still is a visual treat...and the atmosphere is rightly captured, with nice music.

    Overall, I think the movie is worth watching and is definitely of a much higher caliber than 'The Lost World'. It follows a psychological-cum-sci-fi thriller theme and i feel is better than the similar flick 'Abyss'. As from the novel's point-of-view...it could have been done better though. 8/10 stars!
    6gavin6942

    A Strange Sci-Fi, Philosophy Story

    A spaceship is discovered under three hundred years' worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.

    Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 12% based on 50 reviews, with the critical consensus that "Sphere features an A-level cast working with B-grade material, with a story seen previously in superior science-fiction films." Indeed, one wonders what Sharon Stone and Dustin Hoffman were doing in this. Hoffman, of course, was brought on by the director, his friend Barry Levinson. But Stone should have had better projects.

    Some aspects of this are interesting, and even though it was a flop at the time, I could see people today (2015) going back and really giving it a second chance. It has not become a better film with age, but it has something to say about science fiction films of the 1990s. (Most, it seems, were dystopian, so this is something of a fresh change.)
    6secondtake

    Great potential falls flatter and flatter as it goes...

    The Sphere (1998)

    Barry Levinson is one of those directors who has no interest in art, or in invention, or in pretension, either. And so his films sometimes hit a popular strain that makes them take off. He has some terrible misfires, for sure, but his best films ("Rain Man," "Sleepers") have people who you relate to, and who have to confront something extraordinary.

    That was the idea here, based on a Michael Crichton novel (that should have been a heads up). The cast is headliner stuff. Dustin Hoffman is particularly convincing, Samuel Jackson plays a great type, and Liev Schreiber is sharp. Sharon Stone is a dull fourth. They bond, and realize they have things in common, in the first minutes of the film as they converge and go under water to check out an alien spaceship. Even after they are deep below the surface and beginning their unlikely exploration they make a viewer connect. As much as it borrows from "Alien" and "Aliens" this could have been a good film on its own terms. Even the talking computer/alien has its own edge compared to HAL.

    What goes wrong is the plot itself, and not acting, or even directing, can overcome that. As it gets hairier, we need it to be more plausible, not less. Events get increasingly chaotic, so that action and loud noise drive some of the scenes. Subplots are continued but seem increasingly meaningless (at one point, Hoffman and Stone are rushing into the water in an absolute emergency and they start to chitchat about their distant failed love affair). And finally, as people die off and the menace becomes more ambiguous, the movie becomes completely ambiguous, and as a kind of escape valve, announces that any number of crazy thing we have been watching may or may not have been imagined by one character or another.

    But what does that mean about the camera? Isn't there still a differentiation between cinema reality and one character's delusion? Or if these are global delusions including the viewer, shouldn't they do more than simply disorient us? Well, don't hang on for answers. Just hang on. An explosion (of course) caps it all off (why they didn't hit the disarm button isn't explained), and a final logical wrap up that avoids the time travel paradox is warm and fuzzy.
    bob the moo

    First half is really good – but quickly becomes a load of `spheres'!

    When the military discover what they believe to be a spaceship at the bottom of the ocean they bring in Dr Norman Goodman who had once written a report on the protocol for an alien encounter. His report had named a team of experts – this team is also assembled. The team descend to the craft and begin to find some astonishing things about the craft. However when they find a huge golden sphere they begin to experience problems. Problems that become worse when a storm traps them at the bottom of the ocean.

    With a cast like this – you gotta have high hopes. With a director and a writer to match you deserve something fantastic! And for the most part this delivers. The build up is dark, mysterious and exciting. However once the sphere is found it goes downhill. It still has some really good moments – the jellyfish bit is scary and other actions bits are cool. But it gets all muddled up in what the sphere is and who is doing what on the base. It almost manages to hold together until the final half hour then it all just collapses like a flan in a cupboard! It's a shame because for the most part it felt like it was building to something much better, but no.

    The cast promised much but didn't deliver. Jackson was great, but I don't think he can be bad – even in a bad movie. Hoffman stutters around like he doesn't know what he's doing. I know he's meant to be playing a character that isn't used to heroics, but he doesn't bring anything. Stone is OK but at times looks like she reading her lines off a board. Coyote is OK and Schreiber is understated by his own hammy standards. It's also cool to see Queen Latifah in a role.

    Overall this is worth watching as for the majority it's real good. However you notice that the film has got 30 minutes left to go – make your excuses and leave, by then you've seen the best it has to offer.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Many scenes, like Harry (Samuel L. Jackson) and Norman's (Dustin Hoffman's) conversation about making up the ULF report and dealing with Ted (Liev Schreiber), were completely improvised.
    • Goofs
      When Jerry first makes contact, he transmits in code : "MY NAME IS JERRY". Later, the code is revealed to have been mistranslated and the message reads: "MY NAME IS HARRY" If the letters H, E, J, and A in the simple letter/number substitution code were wrong, the first message would have read: "MY NEMA IS JERRY". Also, the entire series of conversations they had would have exhibited the same error, yet none did so. (HAPPY would have been JEPPY, ALL = ELL, etc.)
    • Quotes

      Dr. Harry Adams: We're all gonna die down here.

      Norman Goodman: What?

      Dr. Harry Adams: You see? It's curious. Ted did figure it out - time travel. And when we get back, we gonna tell everyone. How it's possible, how it's done, what the dangers are. But then why fifty years in the future when the spacecraft encounters a black hole does the computer call it an 'unknown entry event'? Why don't they know? If they don't know, that means we never told anyone. And if we never told anyone it means we never made it back. Hence we die down here. Just as a matter of deductive logic.

    • Crazy credits
      The opening credits are cast over an invisible sphere.
    • Alternate versions
      SPOILER ALERT: An alternate television edit has been shown with a simplified and more ambiguous ending that follows the shooting script; Harry warns them that the authorities are on their way to debrief them, and they will demand answers. The three survivors ready themselves to forget about their mission and the power they possess. Outside, a helicopter sets down. Subsequently, we see the three survivors being interviewed in a debriefing room after decompression, each shot individually against the same background. They react as if they're oblivious to anything going wrong in the Habitat, unaware of anything that happened to Ted, Barnes or the Sphere. The helicopter leaves, and the camera pans down to the ocean, where the Sphere supposedly still remains.
    • Connections
      Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Blues Brothers 2000/Illtown/The Replacement Killers (1998)
    • Soundtracks
      Horn Concerto No. 3 in E Flat Major, K.447
      Written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

      Performed by Vienna Mozart Ensemble; Herbert Kraus, Conductor

      Courtesy of LaserLight Digital

      By arrangement with Source/Q

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    FAQ20

    • How long is Sphere?Powered by Alexa
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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • February 13, 1998 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Esfera
    • Filming locations
      • Mare Island, Vallejo, California, USA
    • Production companies
      • Warner Bros.
      • Baltimore Pictures
      • Constant c Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $80,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $37,020,277
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $14,433,957
      • Feb 15, 1998
    • Gross worldwide
      • $37,020,277
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 14 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • DTS
      • Dolby Digital
      • SDDS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.39 : 1

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