The latest trailer for Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s extraterrestrial epic starring Emily Blunt as a Midwest meteorologist, offers additional insight into the oddities featured in the chilling first look. For instance, it’s revealed that the strange glottal stops the character emits while clamming up during the delivery of an on-air weather report are actually an alien language understood by co-star Josh O’Connor’s character, the man who promises to disclose a “truth that will upend all established order across the entire world.”
More revealing than the trailer, though, are comments made by Spielberg during a Hilton Austin panel at SXSW. The legendary director has made several blockbuster movies exploring various types of relationships between aliens and humans ranging from curiously friendly to belligerent, including 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and 2005’s War of the Worlds. Disclosure Day marks his directorial return to the subject for the first time in 20 years—and the latest indulgence in a topic that’s fascinated him for most of his 79 years.
“I’ve always believed, even as a kid, that we weren’t alone,” Spielberg told the SXSW crowd, according to Deadline. “That just goes without saying. The big question is, are we alone now? And have we been alone over the last 80 years? And really, have we been alone over the last 3,000 years?”
Of all his otherworldly movies, Disclosure Day is the most topical, as it explores “the social dislocation that could occur, theologically, if it would be announced that there’s not only evidence, there’s interaction that has been going on for decades that we are just now finding out about.”
Discourse over the subject has reached a fever pitch in the past few months. In February, President Donald Trump directed that the Pentagon and other government agencies identify and release files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs. In March, reports began circulating that 40 new whistleblowers, including intelligence officers, are scheduled to provide protected testimony to the U.S. on topics including the existence of UFO crash retrievals. Former President Obama also added to the fervor on recent appearance on No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen by claiming that aliens are “real” in a statistical sense.
“When President Obama made that comment, I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is so great for “Disclosure Day.” This is amazing,’” Spielberg said of Obama’s comments. “Then two days later, he stepped back the comments and said what he believed in was life 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.”
“All of you here should read about this and see the plethora of documentaries about this dating back to 2018,” Spielberg added. “I don’t know any more than any of you do, but I have a very strong suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now.”
As Colman Domingo, who plays a soon-to-be-vindicated conspiracy theorist in the film, says in the latest trailer: “When the time is right, everything will become clear.” Disclosure Day arrives in theaters and IMAX on June 12.
