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This will contain spoilers, so if you have not seen (or read) Sphere then please take into account that you should not judge a book by its movie.

“Killer jellyfish, squid, sea snakes, and an alien being in the form of a giant totemic golden ball? Please.” This is Samuel L. Jackson’s character Harry in Sphere, explaining why no one is going to believe them when it comes to what really happened when trying to make contact with an alien lifeform. It’s a line that some viewers are welcome to help themselves to when it comes to summing up just how crazy Sphere is.

Based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, the US navy discovers what appears to be an alien spacecraft at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and they think there’s an unknown lifeform in there. Navy Captain Harold Barnes (Peter Coyote) is in charge of investigating the craft and assembles a contact team, psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman), biochemist Dr. Beth Halperin (Sharon Stone), mathematician Dr. Harry Adams (Samuel L. Jackson) and astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber), believing them to be the best of their respective fields. So they go down there, they make it into the spacecraft, and they find what appears to be the lifeform - a large golden sphere. Then things get very weird. Cue killer jellyfish, a “possible” humongous squid and conversing with an alien that calls itself Jerry.

Director Barry Levinson had been looking to direct a sci-fi film and felt that he had found it after reading Sphere. “The central concept of the book is what makes it so intriguing to me,” said Levinson. “With all of its exciting science-fiction elements, at some point it truly becomes a story of interplay between a small group of people, and how they manifest their typically human flaws -- mistrust, jealousy, envy, paranoia -- in ways that are startling and disturbing.” The film was set up at Warner Bros. with Levinson assembling a great cast. The screenplay was written by Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio. Michael Crichton also happened to be onboard as one of the producers, and from his point of view the film probably all made sense, but for a mainstream audience it turned out to be highly confusing.

Before its release, Warner Bros. put out an absolutely brilliant trailer. It built up plenty of mystery, cleverly letting viewers know that the characters do make contact (it would be pretty boring if they didn’t) while still holding back on what happens to them. The posters emphasised the main cast with their floating heads taking up about half of the space, but still managed to convey a sense of mystery.

There are numerous reports on the production budget for Sphere, though it is believed to have cost somewhere between $73 million – $80 million. At the time it was Levinson’s most expensive film. Sphere opened in the US on February 13, 1998. Titanic was still dominating the box office at this time. Sphere landed at #3 with an opening weekend take of $14.4 million. Spending just three weeks inside the top 10, it earned $37 million during its run at the US box office. Earning $33 million overseas, it achieved a total worldwide gross of $70 million.

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