Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's 2002 sci-fi crime thriller Minority Report has a new streaming home, and it can be watched without a paid subscription. As of Nov. 1, the film is available free on Pluto TV, where it sits alongside dozens of other genre titles, from the original Matrix trilogy to more than a dozen Star Trek films.
Directed by Spielberg from a screenplay by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, Minority Report was loosely adapted from Philip K. Dick's 1956 novella The Minority Report. Cruise plays Chief John Anderton, commanding officer of Washington, D.C.'s Precrime unit, which uses information gathered by psychic "precogs" to stop violent crimes before they happen. When a vision shows Anderton himself killing a man, he becomes the target of his own unit and goes on the run. While investigating the mystery and trying to clear his name of a crime that has not yet occurred, he uncovers the existence of "minority reports" -- visions experienced by one precog that diverge from those of the others. With the precog Agatha, played by Samantha Morton, Anderton exposes both the flaws in the system and a deeper conspiracy.
The film shot to the top of the box office on release, earning more than $358 million against a $102 million budget, and drew largely positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 89% critics' "Certified Fresh" rating and an 80% audience "Popcornmeter" score averaged across more than 250,000 ratings.
The property was later extended to television. In 2015, Fox premiered a Minority Report sequel series set eleven years after the film and after the disbanding of Precrime. Stark Sands starred as Dash Parker, a precog who uses his abilities to help Meagan Good's Detective Lara Vega while keeping his identity secret. The series was widely criticized and was canceled after a single ten-episode season.
As for the film's biggest names, Cruise most recently led the cast of writer-director Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger as an eccentric billionaire unwittingly responsible for a global crisis, alongside Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons, John Goodman, Sophie Wilde, Emma D'Arcy, Sandra Hüller and Michael Stuhlbarg. The film has earned just under $50 million against a $180 million budget after a month in theaters and holds a 53% Tomatometer score across more than 340 reviews. Spielberg, meanwhile, is set to return behind the scenes as producer of the next Transformers film, a project announced in early October that also involves longtime franchise producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, with Michael Bay in early talks to direct.
Sources: Comic Book Resources.