Spielberg says ‘Disclosure Day’ is not science fiction as he declares belief in alien contact

Steven Spielberg returns to the subject of extraterrestrial life this summer with a conviction he has never publicly expressed before: He believes.

“It’s my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction,” the director said in a recent interview. “It’s much more reflective of the world as it is evolving and discoveries that are being made as we speak.”

“Disclosure Day,” which opens in theaters and IMAX on June 12, marks Mr. Spielberg’s return to alien-based science fiction after a two-decade absence. The film follows a cybersecurity whistleblower, played by Josh O’Connor, who possesses long-suppressed government evidence of alien contact. Colin Firth plays a corporate executive trying to contain the secret, Colman Domingo portrays the leader of a disclosure movement, and Emily Blunt stars as a meteorologist who begins experiencing a mysterious awakening. Space.com

Early reactions have been enthusiastic, with some critics already calling it Mr. Spielberg’s finest work in 20 years.

The film arrives nearly 50 years after “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and represents what Mr. Spielberg describes as a fundamental shift in his own thinking. Where he once called that 1977 film speculative, he now says the evidence has moved him.

“I’ve been a believer since I made ’Close Encounters’ 50 years ago,” Mr. Spielberg said. “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. But I’ve changed that. I’m now willing to change my mind because of the circumstantial evidence which is overwhelming.”

That shift was driven in part by events in Washington. Mr. Spielberg said he was galvanized by the July 2023 House subcommittee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, at which former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch testified alongside former military pilots about their firsthand accounts of UAPs. Mr. Grusch told lawmakers the government had concealed a multi-decade program to recover and reverse-engineer crashed alien spacecraft — claims the Pentagon said it could not substantiate.

The political backdrop has since shifted. Following a directive from President Trump ordering agencies to identify and release UAP records, the Pentagon began releasing previously classified files this spring, posting documents from the FBI, the Department of Defense, NASA and the State Department to a new government website. 

Mr. Spielberg said the 2023 congressional testimony so energized him that he produced a 50-page treatment for what would become “Disclosure Day.” He then brought in screenwriter David Koepp, a longtime collaborator whose previous work with Mr. Spielberg includes “Jurassic Park,” “War of the Worlds” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” 

“I said, ’Sure, what’s it about?’” Mr. Koepp recalled. “And he said, ’Oh, you know, aliens again. But different this time.’”

Mr. Koepp said the director’s obsessive engagement with the material was unlike anything he had seen in their collaboration. “There was a period in there where I believe he re-read the script every single day for a year,” Mr. Koepp said. “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.”

The film is Mr. Spielberg’s first theatrical release since 2022’s “The Fabelmans” and his first science fiction outing since 2018’s “Ready Player One.” That autobiographical film, he said, left him at an unusual creative crossroads. 

“It was the hardest question I ever had to ask myself because there was such completion in resolving so many personal issues that I had never aired in public before ’The Fabelmans,’” Mr. Spielberg said. “I always used to say it was $40 million of therapy that I didn’t have to pay for. Universal did.”

Despite the film’s extraterrestrial premise, Mr. Spielberg said its most urgent theme is far more human.

“I think every movie should have a great emphasis on empathy because empathy sometimes feels like it’s in short supply,” he said.

Mr. Spielberg, who will turn 80 in December, said he has no interest in counting how many films remain ahead of him. He hopes his next project will be a Western — a genre he said has long eluded him despite his affection for it.