In 1977, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind imagined contact with aliens as an event inspiring awe. Five years later, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial envisioned another arrival as a story about connection, loneliness and friendship.
Now the mega-director is taking another look at the great unknown with Disclosure Day. Industry watchers expect the sci-fi thriller to gross some $65 million this opening weekend and give Spielberg a blockbuster comeback after two back-to-back box office misses. It stars a career-best Emily Blunt as a Kansas City meteorologist with a hidden past and superhuman empathy, alongside Josh O'Connor as a whistleblower who wants to expose a 70-year-long coverup about the existence of alien life. David Koepp (Jurassic Park) wrote the script from an original story by Spielberg.
Disclosure Day is less interested in aliens or world-ending threats than revelation itself. Spielberg positions news cameras as truth tellers, with pivotal scenes taking place in a live TV news studio. The movie is an ideal companion piece to Close Encounters and E.T., but here a filmmaker known for optimism seems to be wrestling with some new doubts about humanity. Ultimately, he returns to the mystery that's long obsessed him and comes to the same spiritual conclusion: Something important lies just beyond our view.
It's incredibly well-timed. Arriving amid government file releases, congressional hearings on UFOs and renewed public fascination with the unexplained, the film explores a question more political than fantastical: Who gets to decide the truth?
Just last month, two releases of US government files further moved the unexplained from the realm of science fiction into the official record and legitimacy. In a social media post, President Trump said that, after studying the files, “the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ Have Fun and Enjoy!”
The publication of the files fundamentally changed little in the real-life narrative. There was nothing shocking in them, mostly blurry photos of lights and amorphous objects that could be anything, kicking Reddit discourse into overdrive. One user, N0SF3RATU, posted, “They are doing this so they can say they release the files while keeping the real stuff hidden,” showing how the release gave more questions than answers for one group of believers.
Congressional hearings held in 2022 and 2023 previously brought UFOs into the public record, with Spielberg telling the Today Show that listening to them helped inspire this film. The US military now has an office dedicated to this phenomenon, even if the evidence remains flimsy. And Spielberg himself has been woven into a conspiracy theory that he's working with the White House to prepare public perception: “I'm not a plant of the Pentagon,” he declared at the New York premiere June 8.
For decades, official institutions largely kept discussion of UFOs at arm's length, starting with the 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico, when the US military announced it had found a “flying disc” before quickly retracting and calling it a weather balloon. Pop culture has kept theories of an alien cover-up alive despite official denials ever since.
