HE gave us two of the biggest alien-encounter movies of all time, so Steven Spielberg fans hope his latest offering won’t crash land.
Disclosure Day, which stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colin Firth, hits cinemas on Wednesday and is the Oscar-winning legend’s first sci-fi film in almost a decade.
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Emily Blunt stars in Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg’s new film Disclosure Day Credit: Alamy
The new blockbuster is Spielberg’s first sci-fi movie in more than a decade Credit: Getty
After his last releases — 2022 drama The Fabelmans and 2021’s adaptation of musical West Side Story — were both financial flops, there are hopes this movie could restore the E.T. and Close Encounters director’s record-breaking status.
It is not just fans who are getting excited about Disclosure Day.
Conspiracy theorists are revelling in its subject matter — extraterrestrials.
The movie follows meteorologist Margaret, played by Emily, who gains extraordinary, unexplained abilities after a mysterious encounter live on air.
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She and alien believer Dr Daniel, played by fellow Brit Josh, team up to expose a government conspiracy and broadcast the truth about life beyond Earth.
Rumours were rife that Disclosure Day was a follow-up to Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, but it was cheekily announced in notes to the Press that the film is “not a sequel (sorry, internet)”.
Spielberg, however, did reveal in the film’s trailer that he is convinced aliens exist.
He said: “I am much more inclined now than I was when I made Close Encounters to really believe that we’re not the only intelligent civilisation in the universe.”
Spielberg directed 1982 hit E.T. and says he has always been fascinated by the topic of aliens Credit: Alamy
He clarified that his new movie is not a sequel to 1977 film Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Credit: Getty
Spielberg, 79, later added: “This is a story about us. All of us, up against the most extraordinary event in human history.
“I used to say to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of this were true?’ And now I’m thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful for people to know all of this IS true?’”
The film giant’s fascination with extraterrestrials stems from his dad Arnold.
Spielberg said: “I’ve always believed. Even as a child, my father was an electrical engineer, and he worked on the very first computer for RCA years and years ago.
“My dad put it into my mind that we are not alone. He wasn’t talking about Earth — he was talking about the cosmos.
“He said, ‘There’s intelligent life out there’. My dad read a lot of science fiction, so I was born believing that out there, life exists, intelligent life exists.”
As far back as 1947 and the famous Roswell incident — when wreckage thought to be an alien spacecraft was found in New Mexico — the US government has been investigating, and many believe hiding, evidence of life beyond Earth.
In 2017, the New York Times published the Pentagon’s “mysterious UFO program”, revealing that the US Defence Department had been secretly funding studies of declared sightings.
Secret alien sightings underlined Spielberg’s belief that we are not alone in the universe Credit: Alamy
Actress Emily Blunt says working with Spielberg has helped to spark the fires of her imagination Credit: Alamy
There were then Congressional hearings in 2023 on whether Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) posed a security threat.
Lead actress Emily, 43, finds the belief of extraterrestrials “healing”.
Speaking about Disclosure Day, which also stars Colin Firth, she said: “This certainly sparked the fires of my imagination when I started researching everything to do with people who have had these experiences, from the congressional hearings that have taken place.
“Every documentary, every docuseries. The thing that I was struck by was how inarguable it seemed to me that people [government officials] were lying.
“There was this absolute peaceful truth pouring out of the witnesses. They know what they saw. They believe it.
“I just found it very healing, actually, watching all of these people talk about this otherworldly experience that they had.
“I think it is an arrogant thing to assume that we know everything, that we’re alone. I mean, they just discovered a thousand new species in our oceans this year on Earth.
“Why would we imagine that we know everything that’s out there in the universe?”
Emily, pictured with Josh O’Connor, says it would be arrogant to assume we know everything about the universe Credit: Getty
Colin Firth also features in Disclosure Day, a movie where the stars expose a government conspiracy and broadcast the truth about life beyond Earth Credit: Alamy
Spielberg’s career spans 50 years and he has won three Oscars, but he still feels the sting of making his first blockbuster, Jaws, in 1974.
The movie was scheduled to take 55 days, but wrapped 100 days over schedule due to technical issues with shooting in the Atlantic.
He was just 27 years old and believed his career was already over.
On the documentary film, Jaws At 50: The Definitive Inside Story, he said: “When the film wrapped, I had a full-blown panic attack.
“It was, logistically, the most difficult movie I think I’ll ever make.
“I couldn’t breathe — I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t get a full breath of air.
“I kept going to the bathroom and splashing water on my face. I was shaking. And I was out of it, I was completely out of it.”
The film cost $9million to produce but made over $470million, becoming the highest-grossing movie in history at that time.
Despite its monumental success, it took years for Spielberg to recover.
He said: “It didn’t stop me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, where the sheets would be soaking wet.
“We didn’t have the words PTSD in those days, and I had consistent nightmares about directing Jaws for years afterwards.”
Another of his films to affect his personal life was 1982 sensation E.T.
The dad-of-seven hadn’t had a desire to have children before making the heart-warming tale of a lost alien, starring Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore.
Spielberg told Variety magazine in 2022: “I didn’t want to have kids because it was not a kind of equation that made sense for me, as I went from movie to movie to movie, script to script.
“It never occurred to me till halfway through E.T. I was a parent on that film.
“I was literally feeling like I was very protective of Henry and Mike [MacNaughton] and my whole cast, and especially Drew, who was only six years old. And I started thinking, ‘Well, maybe this could be my real life someday’.
“It was the first time that it occurred to me that maybe I could be a dad.
“And, maybe in a way, a director is a dad, or a mom.”
Spielberg has son Max, 40, with his first wife, singer Amy Irving. The couple divorced in 1989.
He married actress Kate Capshaw, in 1991, and became a father to her daughter, Jessica, 49, and son, Theo, 37.
The couple went on to adopt or have four more children together — Sasha, Sawyer, Mikaela and Destry.
He added: “I have seven kids and six grandchildren, so E.T. worked for me very well.”
Spielberg moved frequently as a child due to his dad’s work. At 19, when his parents divorced, he blamed his father and barely spoke to him for nearly two decades.
But Spielberg later discovered his mother, pianist Leah Adler, had fallen in love with one of his father’s best friends.
The director took inspiration from his dysfunctional upbringing to write and produce coming-of-age drama The Fabelmans.
Describing the film, starring Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, as “$40million of therapy”, he told the BBC’s Desert Island Discs in 2022: “I didn’t really know what I was doing, except I was answering a need I had. So it was a tightrope for a while.”
The prestige film only grossed $5million at the box office, though it fared better during awards season with seven Oscar nominations.
But Spielberg insists he is not motivated by financial gain. He has said: “I have no interest in making money. It’s not my goal, and I’ve had a tough time proving that to people.”
Regardless of how well Disclosure Day is received by critics and fans, after such a glittering career Spielberg insists: “Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed.”
