Disclosure Day Is More Than Just A Movie

Cristina Gomez
Mar 17
2 min read

Steven Spielberg made headlines this week after publicly stating at the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival in Austin, Texas, that he has a strong suspicion we are not alone on Earth right now. The 79-year-old director was appearing at a live keynote taping of The Big Picture podcast on March 13th, 2026, and his comments were reported in full by The Hollywood Reporter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XTTc2onuPs

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Spielberg pointed to two specific moments that pulled him back into the UAP subject after nearly 50 years away from it. The first was the 2017 New York Times investigation that exposed a secret Pentagon program tracking UAPs and featured accounts from Navy pilots including David Fravor and Alex Dietrich, who reported the now-famous Tic Tac encounter off the USS Nimitz back in 2003. The second was the 2023 congressional subcommittee hearing before the House Oversight Committee, where former intelligence officer David Grusch, Fravor, and Ryan Graves all testified under oath. Spielberg described that hearing as a fascinating exchange, and said it reinvigorated his decision to make the movie Disclosure Day.

The conversation also touched on former President Barack Obama’s February 14th, 2026 appearance on the podcast No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, during which Obama stated in a rapid-fire segment that aliens are real.

The clip spread across global media within hours before Obama walked it back on Instagram, clarifying he meant statistically, given the scale of the universe, life likely exists somewhere — but that he saw no evidence of contact during his presidency. Days later President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that Obama had released classified information, and suggested he might declassify UAP files in response. All of this was unfolding during post-production on Spielberg’s film.

Spielberg’s connection to this subject runs deep. As referenced in production histories of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he worked directly with Dr. J. Allen Hynek — the Project Blue Book astronomer who coined the term close encounters — as technical advisor on the 1977 film. After the film was completed, Spielberg revealed that NASA sent him a 20-page letter warning the film was dangerous. His response, as he has recounted in multiple interviews, was that if the government felt strongly enough to write 20 pages, something must be happening.

On the question of what public acknowledgment of non-human interaction would mean, Spielberg was direct. He said he believes it would disrupt many belief systems around the world — but not destroy them. The word he chose was interaction, not evidence, not sightings. Disclosure Day, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth, opens in theaters on June 12th, 2026.