2001: A Space Odyssey (film) essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" wrote, "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete." Others credit "2001" with opening up a market for films such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Alien", "Blade Runner", "Contact", and "Interstellar", proving that big-budget "serious" science-fiction films can be commercially successful, and establishing the "sci-fi blockbuster" as a Hollywood staple. Science magazine "Discover"s blogger Stephen Cass, discussing the film's considerable impact on subsequent science fiction, writes that "the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000, and the
2001: A Space Odyssey (film) company, and care was taken that the film would be sufficiently "British" to qualify for the Eady Levy, a UK tax on box-office receipts. The film received mixed reactions from critics and audiences upon its release, but garnered a cult following and became the highest-grossing North American film of 1968. It was nominated for four Academy Awards; Kubrick received one for his direction of visual effects. A sequel, "", directed by Peter Hyams, was released in 1984. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1991, it was deemed