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Go behind the scenes of Disclosure Day with director Steven Spielberg and his cast
Featurette: Universal Pictures

Disclosure Day
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Rated PG-13
Disclosed 12 June 2026
#DisclosureDay

Steven Spielberg delivers a sci-fi thriller packed with a timely and surprising emotional hook.

We Are Not Alone

Disclosure Day in Times Square movie poster

From the very beginning, with Disclosure Day ’s opening title fade-in, there’s a vibe of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That vibe builds as disparate characters and situations are introduced, much like the stage setting in CE3K, with strange incidents happening under diverse circumstances. This time, however, instead of audiences being dropped into the blinding, blowing winds of the Sonora Desert in Mexico, they’re stomped in the face by a wrestler in Kansas City.

Spielberg revs up the mojo early.

This is 2026 and Disclosure Day offers a more sophisticated narrative structure that immediately immerses the audience in the thick of an active situation that’s decidedly more intense and with much more at stake. Terminology and concepts are introduced without direct explanations. It’s all pieced together by context and a story that builds and builds until it ties all the pieces together in a stunning climax.

In the center of the stands at that fight is a nervous man clutching a backpack. While others stand and cheer the violence on display in the ring, he remains seated. Then it’s revealed there’s a gun being jabbed in his back. He’s got something valuable in that backpack. Now it’s time to learn what it is and to start speaking the “new language” of Disclosure Day.

Outside the arena, the man with the backpack, Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a desk man, is escorted to meet Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), a field man. Noah warns Daniel of the dangers of dumping “inventory.” Daniel’s warned, “History doesn’t have a reset key.”

But it’s a situation Daniel’s already painfully aware of; the problem is he’s uncertain as to what he should do next.

Is it a bomb in that backpack?

No. It’s something more powerful.

It’s data.

Data stolen by Daniel, a former hacker who’s served his time in federal prison while locked up for previous cybercrimes. He’s now on the lam with his girlfriend, Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), a nun who’s lost her calling.

You Are Not Alone

While Noah leads operations at a defense company called WARDEX, there’s also a guy named Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who stopped showing up for work at WARDEX in favor of doing something rather curious. He’s leading a construction project. He’s building a house in a giant warehouse outside Kansas City. He has his very good reasons to do so.

And then there’s Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt). She’s a meteorologist for a local news station featuring a team of on-air personalities that deftly mimic that familiar newsroom scene as seen on stations from coast to coast. For Margaret, her signature move is a weather “shimmy” that gets stirred up when her favorite weather pattern – hail – comes to town. But then she starts speaking Russian and Korean on the fly, without even realizing it. She’s also become keenly aware of other people’s hardships and challenging relationships without having ever spoken with them before.

By and large, the story focuses on this handful of characters, but they’re all representing some much, much bigger ideas.

Activation.

Inventory.

Flow.

Passenger.

Experiencer.

Drop.

Dive.

At the core of this lingo is a series of disturbing “in vivo” experiments and a strange handheld device (one of a set of three) with its own set of rules as to how it should be held amid all the incredible power it packs.

And – external to all of this – the world is on fire, figuratively, with the news headlines being overrun with stories of a looming World War III.

Inn-Di-Ana

Disclosure Day in Hollywood movie poster

Disclosure Day is based on a story crafted by Spielberg and fleshed out as a screenplay by his long-time and frequent collaborator David Koepp. Among their titles is Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars. Argh. Nix that. George Lucas swapped that working title with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

CE3K was informed by Project Blue Book, a (formerly) top secret program delving into unexplained flying objects in the 1950s and 1960s. Disclosure Day builds on actual reports collected during the past 79 years, incidents involving real people, to ground its story with a sense of reality.

More importantly, here Spielberg and Koepp go deep on the emotional side of things. There was a tenderness to CE3K. There was a heart full of love in E.T.

But Disclosure Day is next level.

There is a grounding theme here that transcends everything and it couldn’t be said any more eloquently. It’s simple. It’s beautiful.

Empathy is core to humanity’s existence. Its absence will lead to our extinction.

Couple that with another key concept – the world is not good at rapid change – and Disclosure Day sets itself apart and raises its stature as a timely work of pop culture. If only people would slow down, pay attention and comprehend.

As Margaret Fairchild says, “Listen.”

Of course, there’s a lingering question behind all of this. If there is a God, why would God only create “intelligent” life on Earth in such a vast, awe-inspiring universe? Perhaps we are merely the “supreme beings” on Earth. But out there? Well, anything goes.

Artificial Intelligence

Spielberg directed A.I.: Artificial Intelligence in 2001. It was overlooked and dismissed back then, but its reputation has been on the rise during the past several years.

In Disclosure Day, there are merely a couple fleeting references to AI directly, such as by newsroom personal questioning if certain material they’re looking at is legitimate or generated by AI. (In a notable stand, it’s been reported Emily Blunt refused to use AI for her alien language performance. Good on her.)

But this all has to be put in a still larger context.

In Daniel’s backpack is information that represents the accumulated experiences belonging to the world’s 8 billion people.

AI as we know it today is absolutely worthless without it being trained on the information and keystrokes of those same 8 billion people.

And it’s leading to the same conversations: is it right for a handful of companies to hold such power over the world? Any more so than governments to keep secrets about extraterrestrial life and all the ramifications they hold?

Is it fair and just for those same companies to fantasize about people no longer having to work because of AI while also accumulating and hording all the wealth required to allow the world to do “something else” instead of work? Where is the empathy in that?

The arguments become nonsensical. It’s a twisted spin of the web: With great power comes great stupidity.

It is true. The world is not good at handling rapid change. AI is proving that. But who should “own” the core truth of the universe?

In an odd fashion, this all feeds into the beauty of Disclosure Day.

Unstoppable

The last time Spielberg directed a summer release fantasy was his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG back in July 2016, which was shockingly underappreciated at the time. There was a bit of a better reception for Ready Player One, but that was a pre-summer release in March 2018.

So, it’s been a while on the sci-fi summer side, but the man’s been busy with plenty of other cinematic goodies, including his masterful adaptation of West Side Story (starring the then-newcomer and now controversial Rachel Zegler).

It’s hard to call this a “return to form,” though, because it’s a form Spielberg’s never really left. He tells stories across all the genres and this is more akin to a warm hug for one of his favorite topics: extraterrestrial life.

What, then, is Disclosure Day? Is it sci-fi? Fantasy? Conspiracy theory thriller? Political potboiler?

All of the above, but also something much better and more interesting than any of them.

And it’s all topped off with some classic Spielberg pixy dust by way of vintage Disney. In CE3K, a child’s favorite song is When You Wish Upon a Star from Pinocchio. This time, a key character’s childhood is revealed along with a different Disney standard, Someday My Prince Will Come from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

That’s pure Spielberg magic. It’s so wonderful to be able to sit back and enjoy a master craftsman doing his work and spinning his tale with such a gifted cast that universally deliver stellar performances.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.