MOVIE NEWS – The 79-year-old director has believed since childhood that we are not alone in the universe, and he has returned to that subject with enormous success more than once before.
His upcoming new film, Disclosure Day, continues that line of thought, but with some unexpected turns. At the recent SXSW – South by Southwest – festival in Austin, Spielberg offered a glimpse behind the curtain. He admitted that he does not possess much more information than the average newspaper reader and has simply taken publicly available facts, organized them, and followed their implications further: the story of the film was inspired by real recent events and by government reports from the past few years. At the center of Disclosure Day is not an invasion or a friendly alien visit, but rather the moment when humanity realizes that extraterrestrials have been here for decades, merely choosing not to reveal themselves, while governments have shown no great urgency in enlightening the public.
In his earlier UFO films, Spielberg explored how small local communities respond to alien contact. This time, however, he broadens the scope and examines the social, religious, and political consequences of disclosure itself. The director believes that new knowledge about an extraterrestrial presence would cause immense trauma and a full-scale social earthquake, shaking belief systems once thought untouchable, though humanity would ultimately find a way to process the shock. That is why Disclosure Day blends the elements of a political thriller and a social drama while remaining pure science fiction in the noblest sense of the genre. Spielberg promises a film paced with real urgency, exactly as the depiction of a world-shaking revelation would demand.
He also told festival audiences that, back in the day, even before Jaws, he had wanted to make Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but studio bosses laughed the idea off, arguing that nobody cared about UFO yarns fit only for the front pages of the worst tabloids. After the staggering success of Jaws, however, those same executives were suddenly begging him to go through his notebooks, because any cherished idea he had could be put into production immediately.
(Disclosure Day – Theatrical release: June 11, 2026)
Source: UIP Dunafilm
