Steven Spielberg thinks his latest alien film is his most realistic alien movie yet.
The director explained in a new interview how he dove into “Disclosure Day” looking to make it more factually accurate to aliens arriving on Earth than his iconic films “ET” or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” calling his latest film a “summation” of his work in the genre.
“Well, I think it’s a departure from both ‘ET’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ which could both fall into the fantasy category, or into what I call science speculation with ‘Close Encounters’ as opposed to just pure sci-fi,” Spielberg said. “But I got very, very interested in this subject when people who were in the know – people in the Air Force, Navy pilots, people in Congress – when they all started talking about this after the New York Times in 2017 leaked the Tic Tac footage that we’ve all heard about and seen.”
He continued: “I got really interested in this not as a science fiction film, but as a kind of summation for me as a filmmaker in this genre that includes both of the aforementioned films. And so I took this subject very seriously because it’s something that I think is closer to fact than fiction.”
“Disclosure Day” stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell and Colin Firth and follows a whistleblower revealing the true existence of aliens and how it affects the globe.
It is the first Spielberg film to land in theaters since 2022’s “The Fablemans,” and early reactions point to the film being worth the wait – with praise rolling in for both the director and Blunt’s performance in particular.
Spielberg has been on something of a hot streak with “West Side Story” and “The Fabelmans” gaining back-to-back critical acclaim (and Best Picture nominations). TheWrap’s own Drew Taylor concurred the widespread praise for “Disclosure Day” with this assessment, saying, “I can’t remember the last time I loved a Spielberg movie as much as #DisclosureDay.”
“Thrilling, funny, deeply emotional and impeccably acted (Emily Blunt, in particular, is astounding),” Taylor continued. “Full of mystery and wonder, it proves that nobody does it quite like Spielberg. Just great.”
“Disclosure Day” premieres in theaters on June 12.
