With all the recent hoopla and hullabaloo surrounding the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, it’s easy to forget that the cinematic creative genius dynamic team of Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, and Steven Spielberg made some pretty adventurous films prior to it, films that in a way set the stage for this timeless classic.

There was Used Cars, the 1980 comedic quilt of craziness which starred Kurt Russell, and 1979’s notoriously panned 1941. But, before that was debut of the team and their glorious work with 1978’s I Wanna Hold Your Hand. The film — executive produced by Spielberg, and directed by Zemekis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gale — was a love letter to not only The Beatles, but the American milieu and craziness that surrounded Beatlemania circa 1964, when the British foursome first landed on New York soil and played The Ed Sullivan Show.

Steven Spielberg‘s Bridge Of Spies takes a look back at a very significant event during the Cold War. At the time, Russia had captured U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) after shooting down his U-2 spy plane. Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Powers’ only hope was for New York insurance lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks), who was recruited by the CIA, to successfully negotiate the terms of his release by exchanging Powers for Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), the convicted spy who Donovan defended in court.

We were given an exclusive interview by Disney to talk to Stowell (Whiplash, Dolphin Tale) about Bridge of Spies, what it was like to be in a Spielberg movie, the people who inspired the film, the U-2 Spy plane, the intense prison scenes, and more. Check out our one-on-one interview with the actor here below.

Bridge of Spies
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters: Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 141 Minutes
Release Date: October 16, 2015

“Everyone deserves a defense… every person matters.”

Directed by Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), Bridge of Spies is a Cold War thriller based on the 1960 U-2 incident.

Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips) stars as James Donovan, a Brooklyn insurance lawyer recruited by the CIA to negotiate the release of Lt. Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), a captured American U-2 pilot.

Donovan boards a plane to Berlin, hoping to win the young man’s freedom through a prisoner exchange. His bargaining chip? Convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), who Donovan defended in court years earlier. There’s one little hitch, though. Another American, college student Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), has been arrested and is being held without charge by the East German police. Now Donovan must avoid being detained and broker one Russian spy for two Americans.

Dreamworks’ Bridge Of Spies hits theaters this weekend, and director Steven Spielberg is on the press tour to help promote the film. While he could discuss Bridge and any other project he’s working — like BFG, or Ready Player One — he chose a different kind of film to talk about. During one of his interviews, Spielberg brought up Indiana Jones 5, and that he might direct it with plans to have Harrison Ford reprise his role at the title character.

More on the story below.

This past summer, Paramount Studios hired 12 writers to write out the bible for the Transformers cinematic universe. The plan was for the writers to come up with ideas that would expand beyond the canon films with spinoffs and prequels. Of the proposed works there were plans for a Bumblebee spinoff, Beast Wars, and more.

Of the nine pitches that were sent to the Transformers brain trust — Michael Bay, Akiva Goldsman, Steven Spielberg, Mark Vahradian, and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, as well as Hasbro’s Brian Goldner — only five were approved. Of those five, a Transformers Cybertron animated origins film will be helmed by Ant-Man co-writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, while Goldsman is confirmed to be scripting Transformers 5. Bay has yet to announce if he will return to direct the fifth untitled Transformers film. It’s still not clear if the other three unnamed projects are spinoffs or prequels, but Hasbro announced that there will be four more Transformers films in the next decade. More on the story below.