What director has made the most movies to be turned into pinball machines?

Pinball and movies. A partnership almost as lucrative as movies and popcorn (at least from the pinball side). As pinball joins Broadway and Hollywood as another IP dependent industry the connection between cinema and the silver ball becomes more and more important.

Movies gave pinball their best-selling game of all time (The Addams Family, 1991), the top three rated machines on Pinside (Godzilla, 2021; Harry Potter, 2025; and Jaws 2024…though admittedly, Harry Potter will probably drop in the rankings once the new game sheen wears off), and for a good ten years in the ‘90s, it seems like you couldn’t release a summer blockbuster without a matching pinball machine.

There’s pinball machines based on hits (Avatar, too many Star Wars machines to count, Rocky), cult classics (The Big Lebowski) and even more than a couple of box office flops (Waterworld, Barb Wire, Johnny Mnemonic). But how many directors can claim more than one pinball machine to their name? And more importantly, what director has made the most films that got turned into a pinball machine?

I’d like to say it’s surprising, but honestly, it’s probably your first guess. That’s right. It’s…

Steven Spielberg

7 Movie Pinballs

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Hook, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Jaws

So, to explain my methodology: I’ve got a one movie/one pinball machine rule. This essentially means that a movie only counts once even if it appears on multiple machines, and a machine only counts once even if it covers multiple movies. So, Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure counts as one movie pinball despite covering three films, and Jurassic Park counts as one movie pinball despite multiple different Jurassic Park pinballs.

Spielberg not only takes the cake as the director with the most pinball machines, but he also holds the distinction of being the director whose movie was first adapted into pinball! Close Encounters of the Third Kind (with its hilarious alien on the playfield) is the first official pinball adaptation (the Tommy machine coincided with the movie but takes its inspiration from the album).

Following Close Encounters, it took until the ‘90s pinball boom for Spielberg to rejoin the pinball world, with Hook, Jurassic Park and The Lost World getting machines timed to their movie releases and Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure landing in the midst of the Indy revival timed to the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles premiering on TV.

Indy got another machine (this time by Stern) timed to and including Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008. It seemed like that’d be the last Spielberg machine, but in 2024, Stern released the newly beloved Jaws pinball machine bringing his total to seven.

It doesn’t seem like anybody will catch up to Spielberg anytime soon as his two closest competitors only have three machines apiece (and at least one of them isn’t going to get any more pinball machines to his name).

3 Movie Pinballs

James Cameron
T2: Judgement Day, Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water

The next two directors on our list are a big step down from Spielberg’s count of seven with three pins apiece. Big Jim Cameron only recently made it to three with the release of Avatar: The Battle for Pandora (pin 2024), which, despite its generic title, directly adapts Avatar: Way of Water (our boy Spider even makes the art package!). Battle for Pandora joins Avatar (film 2009, pin 2010) and T2: Judgement Day to round out the tie for second place. 

Roland Emmerich
Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla

While James Cameron might be an expected name for the silver medal, his fellow winner might not be. Roland Emmerich’s career just so happen to hit its blockbuster peak right at the height of the ‘90s movie pinball boom. All three of Emmerich’s machines were churned out in a four year period with Stargate landing in 1995, Independence Day in 1996, and Godzilla in 1998. Few people’s favorite movies and probably even less people’s favorite pins, but he still made it to three machines when much bigger names stall out at two!

2.5 Movie Pinballs

Richard Donner
Lethal Weapon 3, Maverick

If you looked over Richard Donner’s filmography, you’d probably underline a bunch of options for pinball machines, but I don’t know if you’d flag Lethal Weapon 3 (machine and film 1992) and Maverick (pin and film 1994) as the two films to get pinball adaptations. Superman gets close, but the 1978 Atari machine is very explicitly designed as a comics-based machine with some gorgeous art. Donner is the closest to getting bumped up, with rumors of a Goonies machine landing soon. Personally, an Omen machine where a glass pane slices a pinball head off a priest’s body, would be greatly appreciated. 

Paul Verhoeven
RoboCop, Starship Troopers

Big ups to my fave director Paul Vergoeven who almost hits the three machine record. His first American film, RoboCop got adapted into a Data East machine, and Starship Troopers got a deceptively fun Sega machine to coincide with its release. The .5 is based on a Total Recall machine that never left the prototype stage, despite (or maybe because of) its appropriately mind-bending playfield design.

Total Recall playfield design

2 Movie Pinballs

Peter Jackson
The Hobbit Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Jackson probably has the highest “machine to film” ratio with two machines based on both of his Middle Earth trilogies. Someone with a broader interpretation of adaptations than me, might count King Kong (machine 2025), but it’s clearly not based on any particular interpretation (and given the tangled web of Kong rights, might be based on the published screenplay adaptation that they forgot to renew the copyright on). 

Sam Raimi
The Spider-Man Trilogy, The Evil Dead/Evil Dead II

Raimi just misses the Jackson “machine-to-film” ratio record because while Spider-Man (machine 2007) covers his entire trilogy, Spooky’s Evil Dead (machine 2024) only covers the first two films of the Evil Dead franchise. Raimi probably won’t have another machine to add to his collection, but The Quck and the Dead with its collection of gunfighters and nightly quick draws would be a really good premise for a pinball machine. 

Francis Ford Coppola
Dracula, The Godfather Trilogy

Sorry, there’s no Apocalypse Now where you traipse through the jungle or Jack where you’re a rapidly aging Robin Williams activating “bean fart” multiball in the treehouse. You’ll just have to settle for Coppola’s most-famous trilogy and his visually sumptuous Dracula adaptation. Dracula’s an odd machine. The movie is so visually distinct and the cartoony playfield feels so not in line with its gothic inspo. Meanwhile, the Godfather machine feels much more indebted to college dormroom posters for The Godfather than the films themselves. 

George Lucas
Star Wars, Star Wars—Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

Honestly, Star Wars is partially why I wanted a one film-to-machine ratio rule set on top of the list, because I didn’t feel like figuring out how many of these machines counted as separate entities. But, we’ve got at least Star Wars (1977) and Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) as Lucas-directed films that have shown up as pinball machines. Feel free to count either Data East’s 1992 Star Wars trilogy machine or the Spanish-only 1987 Segasa-Sonic Star Wars machine as your first Lucas pin. 

Tim Burton
Batman, Beetlejuice

It’s kind of shocking that Tim Burton only hit two pinball machines last year when Spooky’s Beetlejuice machine released. Burton’s first pin is Data East’s Batman (pin 1991, film 1989). Honestly, missing out on a pinball vresion of Pee Wee’s breakfast machine seems like a big missed opportunity (not to mention a Tequila multiball). We’ve had to wait 35 years until his next machine, even though it’s based Batman’s immediate predecesor. I think this might be the biggest gap between movie pinball releases for a single director.

Martin Campbell
Goldeneye, Casino Royale

We all know our man Martin Campbell has revitalized the Bond franchise completely on two separate occasions. Well as a thanks for that, he’s got two Bond-associated machines to his name. The first, Goldeneye, was a contemporary release to the film. The second is the James Bond 007 60th LE edition from 2024 (not to be confused with Stern’s 007 machines that are based solely on the Connery films and features an entirely different playfield). 

Honorable Mention

Stephen Hopkins

Stephen Hopkins, who directed Lost in Space (machine and film 1998) and The Nightmare on Elm Street Part V: The Dream Baby, would join the two-machine club, but for the unfortunate fact that a close look at the playfield and art for Freddy: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1994) reveals direct references to Elm Streets 3, 4, and 6, but Dream Baby appears skipped over entirely. [NOTE: I have not played this machine, so if there are callouts that quote the movie, I’d count that and bump Hopkins into the twos…at least until they release a Predator 2 machine). 

Photos provided by Pinside and Knapp Arcade.