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War of the Worlds (2025 film)

2025 American thriller film directed by Rich Lee

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ135458343 ↗
Source-derived summary

War of the Worlds is a 2025 American screenlife science fiction film based on the 1898 novel by H. G. Wells. The film was directed by Rich Lee with a screenplay by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman. 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 and is considered one of the worst films of all time, with particular criticism aimed at Ice Cube's performance and its extensive product placement. At the 46th Golden Raspberry Awards, it won five of the six categories it was nominated for, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Actor.

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. When large machines emerge from the meteorites and start attacking humans, Will and his friend Sandra from NASA conclude it is an alien invasion.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “War of the Worlds (2025 film)” is 2025 American thriller film directed by Rich Lee. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Worlds, film and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2025, 1898—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2025-07-30, 2025-08-13—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Worlds, film and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2025 American thriller film directed by Rich Lee” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q135458343. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025 and 1898.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “War of the Worlds (2025 film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow War of the Worlds (2025 film) primary sources, War of the Worlds (2025 film) archive and Worlds research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “War of the Worlds (2025 film)”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “War of the Worlds (2025 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.