Steven Spielberg’s new sci-fi movie Disclosure Day may mark his return to the worlds of UFOs and space aliens — but fans hoping for the film to be linked to his 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind will be disappointed.
The Oscar-winning director, 79, is back with his first film in four years, in which a TV meteorologist (Emily Blunt) and a cybersecurity expert (Josh O’Connor) uncover a widespread conspiracy around the existence of aliens.
Ahead of its release, many Spielberg fans became convinced that the film could be sequel to his 1977 classic Close Encounters – in which Richard Dreyfuss plays a man from small-town Indiana whose life is upended when he encounters a UFO. It came after the release of Disclosure Day’s trailer, with some interpreting its closing moment, where a flying saucer appears from the sky, as being a direct nod to Close Encounters.
Unfortunately for those fans, that isn’t the case. Spielberg has set the record straight in a new interview, revealing that there is no literal, textual connection between Disclosure Day and Close Encounters.
“It is not a sequel in any way, shape, or form to Close Encounters,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
In fact, Spielberg went on to detail the distinct differences between the conspiracies explored in each film. While both blockbusters look at the cover-up of alien life, the government are doing the hiding in Close Encounters whereas in Disclosure Day, it’s a “deep state contracting company” responsible.
“I really don’t believe that governments can keep secrets,” he said. “But big tech companies can. And there are contracting companies that I believe hold all the knowledge and have the archives, not governments.”
Although both films were inspired by Spielberg’s fascination with interplanetary life forms – with the director using the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s 2023 hearings on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) sightings as research for Disclosure Day. During the hearings, citizens testified under oath about instances where they had witnessed UAPS.
“We took a lot of language out of those hearings and put them in dialogue. The people who were speaking under oath were really credible,” he told the publication, with star Blunt adding that she watched “pretty much every congressional hearing, documentary and docuseries” ahead of filming.
Earlier this month, Spielberg said that he thinks humanity will discover whether “there is life beyond Earth” in his lifetime. When asked by the BBC whether humans would get answers on alien-life, he said: “Yes. And I’ll accept whatever they are.”
“My view has become more realistic,” he said. “There’s a lot of mystery and things that are undisclosed but I have become more optimistic that people are going to be able to discover things that we have not been allowed to discover.”
The film, which also features Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson and Wyatt Russell in the cast, is now in cinemas.
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