Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out in December 1977, made $116 million in the US alone, and lost the box office crown for that year to exactly one movie: Star Wars. Not a bad second place.

Josh, Garrett, and David kick off Spielberg in Space Month with Spielberg's pre-E.T. love letter to alien optimism. They get into why Richard Dreyfus was the right guy for a role Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, and Gene Hackman all passed on, why the mashed potatoes scene is actually the emotional center of the whole thing, and what it means that this is basically the only alien movie where nobody tries to blow anything up. All three hosts land at four and a half stars. Josh finally wins the Letterboxd guessing game. David's son watched the aliens and said they looked like naked five-year-olds.

So Many Sequels is your book club for movies. Follow along at somanysequels.com and @somanysequelspod on Instagram.

Summer movie season is officially kicking off, and the box office is already throwing curveballs. This week, we dive into the numbers for The Mandalorian & Grogu, which defied early tracking worries to pull in a solid $81.9 million over the weekend. But the real story might be the horror-thriller Obsession, which pulled off a rare 30% weekend-to-weekend jump thanks to an intense viral billboard campaign and massive word-of-mouth.

Before the box office breakdown, we catch up on everything we've been watching on screens big and small. Josh and Garrett check in on the brutal fatalities and Karl Urban's washed-up Johnny Cage performance in Mortal Kombat 2. Meanwhile, David checks out the streaming survival-thriller Send Help starring Rachel McAdams, and gets surprisingly emotional over the Netflix book adaptation Remarkably Bright Creatures, featuring Alfred Molina as a brilliant, human-helping octopus.

Go check that out at somanysequels.com to subscribe, and let us know what you're watching on Instagram at @somanysequelspod.

The guys wrap up their Golden Oldies theme with a divisive debate over Alfred Hitchcock’s voyeuristic classic, Rear Window.

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So Many Sequels is a movie podcast where Josh Gammon, Garrett Powders, and David Prock talk about new releases, old favorites, and everything in between like a book club for movies.