War of the Worlds (2025 film)

War of the Worlds
Release poster
Directed by	Rich Lee
Screenplay by	Kenneth A. Golde Marc Hyman
Story by	Kenneth A. Golde
Based on	War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
Produced by	Patrick Aiello Timur Bekmambetov
Starring	Ice Cube Eva Longoria Clark Gregg Iman Benson Henry Hunter Hall Devon Bostick Michael O'Neill Andrea Savage
Cinematography	Christopher Probst
Edited by	Charles Ancelle Jake York
Music by	Jon Natchez
Production companies	Bazelevs Company Patrick Aiello Productions
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	July 30, 2025 (2025-07-30)
Running time	89 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

War of the Worlds is a 2025 American screenlife science fiction thriller film based on H. G. Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. The film was directed by Rich Lee with a screenplay by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman from a story by Golde. It stars Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Andrea Savage, Henry Hunter Hall, Iman Benson, Devon Bostick, and Michael O'Neill. War of the Worlds was released by Universal Pictures on Amazon Prime Video on July 30, 2025. The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics.

Plot

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officer Will Radford works for a government surveillance program that can monitor every person on Earth. His relationship with his pregnant daughter Faith and son Dave is strained due to his use of the program to constantly monitor them. While helping FBI agents try to find a mysterious hacker, known as "Disruptor", meteors begin striking all over the planet. Large machines emerge from these and start attacking humans, which Will, and his friend Sandra from NASA, ascertain to be an alien invasion. Will helps Dave and Faith evade the machines before being called to a meeting with DHS Director Donald Briggs, U.S. Secretary of Defense Walter Crystal, and the president.

The president authorizes a military response, which other governments soon follow. Despite initial success, Will notices the machines concentrate around data centers worldwide. The larger machines then disperse smaller insectoid creatures to harvest the data inside these buildings. This allows the aliens to strengthen their machines and continue to defeat human forces. To his dismay, Will also discovers that Disruptor is Dave. Dave sends him a link to classified information about a surveillance operation known as "Goliath". Reading these files, Will discovers that alien ships had previously arrived on Earth, and that the government knew they fed on data. Despite warnings that activating Goliath could alert the aliens, Briggs chose to activate it anyway. Will confronts Briggs, who claims his actions were necessary to keep people safe. Briggs then locks Will out of the DHS system.

With the help of Dave and his team of hackers, Will re-enters the system, and they plant a virus to disable the aliens' machines. Though it works at first, the aliens shake off the virus and continue fighting. They are also able to locate and kill most of the hackers, except Dave. The military plans to bomb the DHS headquarters (under which Goliath is kept), to ensure the aliens cannot access the system. With the help of Dave, Faith, and her boyfriend Mark, Will breaks into the bunker in time and shuts down Goliath. With Goliath down, the military calls off the bombing.

Some time later, the aliens are defeated, and Will and Dave are celebrated as heroes. Briggs' crimes are exposed and he is arrested, and Faith is credited with using her DNA studies to ensure the aliens' defeat. Crystal gives Will an offer to lead a new surveillance program that will not interfere with people's privacy, but he declines, saying, "Now, I'm watching you." He then leaves to go to Faith's bridal shower.

Cast

• Ice Cube as William "Will" Radford, a surveillance and threat assessment expert at the Department of Homeland Security
• Eva Longoria as Dr. Sandra Salas, Will's friend who works at NASA
• Clark Gregg as Donald Briggs, Director of the Department of Homeland Security
• Andrea Savage as Sheila Jeffries, FBI Agent
• Henry Hunter Hall as Dave Radford, Will's son, a video gamer and hacker known as Disruptor
• Iman Benson as Faith Radford, Will's daughter, a biomedical researcher who is pregnant
• Devon Bostick as Mark Goodman, Faith's boyfriend, Amazon delivery driver
• Michael O'Neill as Walter Crystal, United States Secretary of Defense
• Jim Meskimen as the President of the United States

Production

In September 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ice Cube joined in the lead role in an untitled film produced by Timur Bekmambetov, which would be directed by Rich Lee with a screenplay by Kenneth A. Golde for Universal Pictures. Universal was intrigued by the project by Bekmambetov's use of screenlife technology, described as having "the look of commercial event film but at the budget of a contained thriller", which also allowed the actors and crew members to work in individual workspaces, which was seen as useful regarding the pandemic's impact on the film industry. In October, Eva Longoria joined the cast. Principal photography took place in late 2020. In April 2024, it was revealed to be an adaptation of the 1898 novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

In July 2025, Clark Gregg, Andrea Savage, Henry Hunter Hall, Iman Benson, Devon Bostick, and Michael O'Neill were revealed to have been part of the project. The film was produced using a screenlife technique that places audiences inside the action through the lens of phones, computers, and tablets. Bekmambetov added: "If aliens invaded today, how would we experience it? Most likely, we'd be watching it on our phones, in that way, it's kind of a modern spin on Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. Back then, he used radio, the most popular technology of the time, to make people believe the invasion was real. Today, that medium is the screen of our devices."

Release

War of the Worlds was released by Universal Pictures on Amazon Prime Video on July 30, 2025.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 3% of 32 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Stranding Ice Cube in an inept screensaver with wall-to-wall product placement, War of the Worlds will make audiences consider giving peace a chance instead." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 8 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".

Andy Meek of Boy Genius Report called the film the "worst film of the year". Peter Debruge of Variety considered the film to be a poor adaptation of The War of the Worlds, criticizing the use of screenlife elements, Ice Cube's performance, and excessive Amazon product placement.

Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave it zero out of four stars and wrote, "Is it really that bad? It sure is, not only ineptly made in every category that a critic could consider but also truly morally icky, constantly promoting Amazon while telling a story of world powers uniting against what is basically an interstellar data breach. Worst of all, it's only rarely even 'stupid fun', which was the hope of this critic who has seen every Sharknado movie and chuckles at memories of Mansquito."

External links

• War of the Worlds at IMDb