For nearly 50 years, Steven Spielberg kept one foot on the ground when it came to extraterrestrial life.
Something changed his mind.
And what Spielberg just said publicly about alien contact has people across the country talking.
The Man Who Made You Believe Is Now a Believer Himself
Spielberg has spent his entire career making audiences wonder whether something is out there. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., War of the Worlds — the man practically owns the genre. But for all those decades of filming little green lights and suburban wonder, he always kept a personal disclaimer handy.
“I’ve been a believer since I made ‘Close Encounters’ 50 years ago,” Spielberg says. “But I would always say: Until I’ve seen a UAP or a UFO with my own eyes, I’m not going to categorically state that life from out there has come here.”
That was then.
“But I’ve changed that,” he adds. “I’m now willing to change my mind because of the circumstantial evidence which is overwhelming.”
Spielberg, at 79, isn’t hedging anymore. The man who taught a generation to look up has decided the answer is probably yes — and he made a whole movie about it.
What Pushed Him Over the Edge
Spielberg, having long followed reports of alleged alien encounters, was inspired by the 2023 House Subcommittee on National Security hearing on UAPs: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Among the witnesses was whistleblower and former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, who testified that the government concealed a program investigating UAPs. The Pentagon then denied it.
And yet the story kept growing. In April, President Trump said the Pentagon is preparing to release some “very interesting” UFO files. That’s not nothing. When a sitting president says the Pentagon has interesting UFO files coming, people tend to pay attention.
Those 2023 testimonies and others so fueled Spielberg that he produced a 50-page treatment on what would become “Disclosure Day.” That’s a lot of pages for a man who could have just made another Indiana Jones sequel and called it a career.
During the writing process with screenwriter David Koepp, Spielberg texted him more notes, he says, “than I’ve ever sent to anyone in my life.” “There was a period in there where I believe he re-read the script every single day for a year,” Koepp says. “We’d be in different time zones and I would wake up to 30 or 35 texts from his most current reading of the script.”
Forty-two drafts. Koepp told Vanity Fair it took 42 drafts to get the story right, setting a personal record. That’s not a filmmaker phoning it in. That’s someone who thinks the subject matter actually matters.
The Film Itself
“Disclosure Day” stars Josh O’Connor as a cybersecurity whistleblower with government evidence, long suppressed, chronicling a history of alien encounters. Guiding him in his escape from a corporate executive played by Colin Firth who is trying to keep it all under wraps is the disclosure movement’s leader, played by Colman Domingo. Meanwhile, a meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild, played by Emily Blunt, begins having a mysterious epiphany.
Spielberg said in a recent interview, “It’s my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction. It’s much more reflective of the world as it is evolving and discoveries that are being made as we speak.”
That’s a remarkable thing for a filmmaker to say. He’s not selling you a fantasy. He’s telling you to pay attention.
Koepp said the filmmakers decided early on they didn’t want to make a movie that said everything the audience thought was wrong. “We wanted to make a movie that said, ‘Everything you thought is right, and here’s overwhelming proof of it.'”
There’s also something bigger running underneath the whole picture. As much as it’s about aliens, “Disclosure Day” is about empathy. “I think every movie should have a great emphasis on empathy because empathy sometimes feels like it’s in short supply,” Spielberg says.
Early Reaction Has Been Jaw-Dropping
Initial reactions have been positive, with critics praising Blunt’s performance and calling it “Spielberg’s best film in 20 years.”
Collider’s Steven Weintraub wrote on X, “In a shock to absolutely no one, Steven Spielberg has delivered another towering home run with ‘Disclosure Day.'” Gizmodo senior reporter Germain Lussier called the film “a dense roller coaster ride blending chase film, love story, and mystery, all wrapped in sci-fi wonder” and added, “It’s Spielberg’s best film in 20 years, filled with all the magic that makes his films so special, plus an all-time character/performance by Emily Blunt.”
But the reviews almost feel secondary here. The real story is a 79-year-old director who built his legend on imagining contact with the unknown, and who now stands in front of cameras and says the evidence isn’t imaginary anymore.
Box office analysts at Boxoffice Pro projected an opening weekend of $40-50 million prior to the film’s release in the United States, while a report by Puck estimates that “Disclosure Day” will need to cross the $300 million mark to break even. The financial stakes are real. But Spielberg has never seemed less interested in the business side of things than he does right now.
What This Actually Means
Think about the timing for a second. Congress held hearings. Whistleblowers testified under oath. The Pentagon denied things it had previously acknowledged. And now President Trump says interesting files are coming.
Spielberg watched all of that and made a movie he refuses to call science fiction. That’s worth sitting with.
For decades, anyone who took UAP sightings seriously got laughed out of the room. The media dismissed them. Government officials stonewalled. The subject was radioactive for anyone who wanted to be taken seriously. And yet here’s one of the most decorated filmmakers in American history — a man with more cultural credibility than almost anyone alive — saying publicly that the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
That’s not a small thing. People who’ve followed UAP disclosures for years, who watched those 2023 congressional hearings and came away convinced something real was being hidden, have been saying exactly what Spielberg is now saying. And they didn’t need 42 script drafts to get there.
“I am much more inclined now than I was when I made ‘Close Encounters’ to really believe that we’re not the only intelligent civilization in the universe,” Spielberg says in the film’s trailer. “This is a story about us, all of us, up against the most extraordinary event in human history.” He asks: “How will disclosure change us? I believe for the better.”
But the government suppression angle in the film isn’t just dramatic license. Koepp pointed to the real-world record: “There’s congressional testimonies. There’s government documents dating back to the 40’s. There’s such a wealth of material.” The question of what Washington, D.C. has known and for how long didn’t start with a screenplay.
“Disclosure Day,” which Universal Pictures releases June 11, returns Hollywood’s preeminent big-screen craftsman to one of his most abiding questions: Are we alone? Spielberg spent 50 years making that question feel magical. Now he’s making it feel urgent.
Sources: Associated Press via Breitbart, Wikipedia, NewsNation, Newsweek, Audacy/KCBS Radio