Steven Spielberg has dismissed the Disclosure Day alien conspiracy theories suggesting his new UFO film was made to ease the public into an official revelation about extraterrestrial life. In other words, no, he says he has not been quietly hired as humanity’s cinematic orientation officer for first contact.
Speaking to Metro’s senior film reporter Tori Brazier at the London premiere of Disclosure Day, Spielberg laughed off the idea that the film was designed as a piece of advance public conditioning.
“Well, I’m not suggesting I know anything!” he said.
The director explained that the movie came from research into public reporting on UFOs, now more commonly called UAPs, rather than any secret briefing from people with better badges than the rest of us.
“I made the movie, but I made the movie based on what I could simply gather by all the documentaries that have been made on the subject of UFOs, now called UAPs, on people who are reporting this from the intelligence community in Washington DC,” he said.
Why Spielberg’s new UFO film sparked speculation
The theory that Hollywood prepares audiences for real-world events has been circulating online for years. Online theorists have applied it to pandemic thrillers, political dramas, nuclear war stories, films about government corruption, and, naturally, alien invasion movies.
The idea, at its most elaborate, is that filmmakers are quietly handed information about future revelations, then fold those ideas into entertainment so the public will be less shocked when the truth arrives. It is a tidy theory, which is one reason it survives. It is also rather convenient, which is another.
So when Spielberg, the filmmaker behind E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, returned to alien territory with a film called Disclosure Day, the speculation was not exactly surprising.
The new blockbuster centers on government secrets and UFO revelations, which put it directly in the path of audiences already primed to search for hidden meaning. Spielberg, however, insists the timing is not evidence that he knows something the public does not.
What Spielberg said about real UFO disclosures
Spielberg did not deny that the real-world conversation around unexplained aerial phenomena has shifted. He pointed to whistleblowers, military pilots, and intelligence figures who have spoken publicly in recent years.
“There’s been whistleblowers, Air Force pilots, Navy pilots… There’s been so much disclosure just in the last six years, all the way back from the New York Times article on the front page in 2017, where the tic tac was popular,” he said.
He was referring to the widely discussed 2004 sighting of a roughly 40-foot-long, oval-shaped object, often described as the “Tic Tac” UFO.
“So this is the time, I think, when we’re going to find out something,” Spielberg added.
That line will probably not calm anyone already building a theory board. Still, Spielberg stressed that the movie was not made at anyone’s request as a way to prepare the public for a future announcement.
“I didn’t make the movie because somebody told me you should make a movie to condition people for the possibility of disclosure,” he said.
“But I just feel that the coincidences, we made the movie and suddenly the government has started to release, not very clear images, but some images are being released.”
David Koepp took a firmer view
While Spielberg rejected the public-conditioning theory, screenwriter David Koepp was more direct about what he took from researching the film.
Koepp said he became convinced that governments have not been fully honest about UFO sightings and unexplained aerial phenomena.
“I know for a fact now, from everything I’ve read and the research I did and the people I talked to, that the government’s been lying for 79 years about things that have happened,” he said.
“And even now, as they’re starting to trickle out things, there’s things they’re concealing, that they’re suppressing. I became certain of that, and I didn’t know that before.”
That contrast is part of what makes Disclosure Day land at a particularly charged moment. Spielberg is returning to a genre he helped define, but the subject matter has moved far beyond late-night speculation. UFOs and UAPs are now discussed in government hearings, military reports, and mainstream political coverage.
For audiences, that gives the film an extra charge. It is not just another story about strange lights in the sky. It arrives while public trust, official secrecy, and the question of what authorities choose to reveal are all very much live topics.
Emily Blunt said the subject already fascinated her
Emily Blunt, who stars in the film as meteorologist Margaret Fairchild, said she was already open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life before joining the project.
“I was always really open-minded to it,” she said.
“I thought it would be sort of insane to imagine we’re alone in the galaxy where we don’t even know the half of even species on our own planet, let alone what’s out there.”
Blunt said preparing for the role led her into UFO reports, interviews, and witness testimony.
“I think then you kind of go down that wormhole of reading everything you can, watching everything you can,” she said.
“And then it was people’s resonant truth that I felt, when you see them being interviewed about it. They just seemed so clear, so honest, even though they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve been cast out, discredited, disbelieved for just simply being astonished.”
Her character, Margaret, becomes caught in events that could change humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe. Blunt said she immediately recognized the type of character Spielberg often gravitates toward.
“He often likes people who are outsiders, who are quite idiosyncratic, not built for a hero’s journey,” she said.
“I thought she had a very Spielbergian feel to her.”
Colin Firth, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, and the film’s secrecy
Blunt also reunites in Disclosure Day with her Mary Poppins Returns co-star Colin Firth. Asked about him on the red carpet, she seemed less focused on polished co-star sentiment and more amused by something she had just seen.
“I drive him insane. I don’t know where he is, but he almost fell over, over there. I don’t know if anyone saw it, but I saw it and it was fabulous,” she said, gesturing into the crowd.
So, if the film is not preparing humanity for alien contact, it has at least preserved one important terrestrial event: Colin Firth nearly losing his balance.
Henry Lloyd-Hughes, who plays Casper Boyd, described a production kept under unusually tight wraps, which is unlikely to discourage internet speculation.
“Everything is quite secret, as you maybe could guess,” he said.
“I got a letter! I got a letter asking if I would like to join a company of actors, and at that point, it could have been anything.
“It could have been a workshop, it could have been a commercial. So everything is shrouded in mystery and then, one by one, you’re like, okay, I’m finding out it’s a film… It’s obviously a really exciting watershed moment.”
Secretive casting is not unusual on a Spielberg film. It is also, inconveniently, exactly the sort of detail that makes online theory-builders very busy.
Spielberg says he still feels like a student
Despite his long career and his central place in modern blockbuster history, Spielberg said he still sees each film as a chance to learn.
“Every film is a learning experience for me,” he said.
“I may be close to 80, but I don’t feel that when I’m filmmaking or telling stories because it’s the greatest youth-eter I know to do this job, to have the privilege of having this job!”
That sense of curiosity may be the more useful explanation for Disclosure Day than any grand hidden plan. Spielberg has returned to aliens, secrecy, and wonder at a time when those subjects feel newly unsettled in public life.
Conspiracy theorists may not be satisfied. But for now, Spielberg’s position is simple: he made a movie, not a government onboarding video.
Disclosure Day opens in UK cinemas on June 10.
