War of the Worlds (2025 film)

War of the Worlds
Official 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 was panned by critics and received a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Plot

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officer Will Radford works for a government surveillance program that can monitor every person on Earth. 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. Will and a friend from NASA ascertain this to be an alien invasion.

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. Will also discovers that Disruptor is his son, 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, Director of Homeland Security Donald 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. They then 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 most of the hackers and kill them, except Dave. The military plans to bomb the DHS headquarters (under which Goliath is kept), to ensure the aliens can't access the system. With the help of Dave and his biologist daughter Faith, 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 for violating the Constitution, and Faith is credited with using her DNA studies to ensure the aliens' defeat. Will is offered to lead a new surveillance program that won't interfere with people's privacy, but he declines, saying "Now, I'm watching you."

Cast

• Ice Cube as Will Radford, a surveillance and threat assessment expert at 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.

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, which was revealed to be an adaptation of the 1898 novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

Release

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

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 0% of 16 critics' reviews are positive.

Peter Debruge of Variety considered the film to be a poor adaptation of The War of the Worlds, criticizing the film's utilization of screenlife elements, Ice Cube's performance, and excessive Amazon product placement.

External links

• War of the Worlds at IMDb