Steven Spielberg: Disclosure Day Marks Lifetime Believing ‘We Are Not Alone on Earth’
Steven Spielberg reflects on why so much of his filmography is fixated on aliens... and admits to this day, he still looks to the sky and believes.
Fifteen minutes before Steven Spielberg walked onstage at the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Austin Hotel, the room filled with the ambient sounds of a pedal steel guitar. In anticipation of the upcoming conversation with the film industry’s most prolific director, the music transformed the space into something ethereal, almost extraterrestrial. It’s befitting an auteur who was in town to discuss a specific genre he has contributed to—and a set of beliefs he holds well beyond the screen.
Spielberg was joined by Sean Fennessey, host of The Big Picture podcast for the Ringer, to discuss his filmography and extrapolations of the film world’s future. But first, Fennessey inquired about the filmmaker’s childhood.
“When I was really little, I had an abundance of fears, and the fears actually came from my imagination,” Spielberg said. “I saw Fantasia … and it just destroyed me. For the next year, I couldn’t sleep. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen… That’s kind of how the whole thing started, with me wanting to find some kind of an outlet, to be able to exorcize the demons of fear and put it on someone else, right? Take it out of me and put it on something else, and that’s where the whole movie thing started for me.”
It was these fears that drew Spielberg to the world of fantasy and science fiction, inspiring films like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg admitted that E.T. was the primary experience that inspired him to have children of his own, calling it “the most joyful time” in his career. The director also spoke to the influence Close Encounters had on his future projects.
“[Close Encounters] was kind of on the fringes of science and mythology, and so no one really got it when I said I want to make a UFO movie,” Spielberg recalled. “Everybody thought, ‘What, you want to make a movie about The National Enquirer? That’s what you want to do? You want to make a movie about crackpot reporting of things that aren’t really occurring?”
These misconceptions of Close Encounters predicted Spielberg’s newest project: Disclosure Day. The film is set to release in the summer of 2026 and is premiering at an interesting moment in the national discussion around UFOs—or UAPs as they’re now more commonly called in government documentation. It also foreshadowed current debates to this day, including among former commander-in-chiefs. Take last month when former President Barack Obama stated on a podcast hosted by Brian Tyler Cohen that he believed in extraterrestrial life; he just hasn’t seen it for himself.
“When President Obama made that comment, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is so great for Disclosure Day,’” Spielberg said. “Then, two days later, he stepped back and said he believed it was in the cosmos, which of course everybody should believe in, because no one should ever think that we are the only intelligent civilization in the entire universe… The big question is, are we alone now, and have we been alone over the last 80 years?… I have a very strong, sneaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now, and I made a movie about that.”
Despite his penchant for telling extraterrestrial stories, Spielberg disappointedly shared that he is not among the population of believers who have seen a UFO in real life.
“I’ve made Close Encounters, I’ve made E.T., you’re about to see Disclosure Day,” Spielberg said. “You know, I’m really into this. Why haven’t I seen anything? My friends have seen UFOs, now called UAPs. I made a movie called Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I haven’t even had a close encounter with the first or second kind. Where’s the justice in that?”
Maybe someone will finally want to say hi after Disclosure Day makes contact with movie theaters on June 12.