Steven Spielberg frenzy: Two films coming in 10-month span

Steven Spielberg tends to have a distinct pattern in his moviemaking--He’ll take a hiatus of as much as two years, then come back with a few movies in quick succession.

Early last decade he didn’t have a movie for a couple years when “The Terminal,” “War of the Worlds” and “Munich” all hit within 18 months of each other. He didn’t have a movie for three years after “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull” in 2008--then had “War Horse,” “The Adventures of Tintin” and “Lincoln” all come out within a year.

That trend is repeating itself with his next crop. Spielberg has been very deliberative since finishing “Lincoln” two years ago,” as projects as diverse as “Robopocalypse” and “American Sniper” looked to be up next before going by the boards.

But starting next year we’ll get a new dose of Spielberg, and then some: The director’s DreamWorks announced Monday that he’s going into production on his untitled Cold War thriller with Tom Hanks and will have it ready for release in October 2015. He’ll follow that up with a new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “BFG” coming in July, 10 months after that. That means he’ll do what he’s done before — prep, shoot and wrap, then work on post while he’s doing that simultaneously for the second film.

Unlike some of these other bursts of productivity, which switch off between the upscale and the commercial, these both have the ring of mainstream entertainment, though it’s possible the Cold War picture will harbor some award ambitions as well.

That film centers on an attorney sent by the CIA to negotiate the return of an American pilot at the height of the Cold War. The second is a live-action take (there had previously been an animated one) on Dahl’s 1982 book about the titular gentle giant and his banding up with a young heroine to slay some evil giants. (Given the kid-centric point-of-view, it’s no surprise the script it written by the scribe of “E.T.”)

However you slice it, Spielberg continues to be prolific. In addition to his producing activities on film and TV, these new movies would, by a quick count, put him over 15 features in his post-”Schindler’s List” phase alone. A lot of that productivity just happens to come in bunches.

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