Steven Spielberg just attended CinemaCon for the first time.
The legendary filmmaker celebrated his arrival at the annual Los Vegas movie theater convention by bringing a new trailer for “Disclosure Day,” his upcoming sci-fi feature that returns the director to the alien subgenre.
A bird enters a window and lands on a table in front of Emily Blunt’s character. She rushes into a studio to deliver the weather at a Kansas City news network. We then see the footage from the first trailer where Blunt’s character begins speaking in what appears to be an alien language.
Josh O’Connor’s character says that he stole footage, which he then plays on a TV. The footage shows people carting around bodies on stretchers. O’Connor says that they aren’t children and won’t reveal if they’re even humans.
Colin Firth’s character starts searching for Emily Blunt after hearing her speak, while O’Connor’s character reveals that he can understand what she’s saying. “It’s math.”
Blunt’s character calls Colman Domingo’s character while in the car with Wyatt Russell’s character. She then calls O’Connor’s character, Daniel, and tells him that the government knows where he is and is going to kill him. She doesn’t know how she knows that they’re coming for him, or who he is at all. Colin Firth says he needs to hunt them down because people won’t understand what they know.
Domingo’s character explains that “It’s always been the two of you” to O’Connor and Blunt’s characters as a flashback shows what appears to be the two of them as children on a table being experimented on by alien hands. We get a slightly better look at the scene where O’Connor and Blunt jump on a train after their car is rammed into the side of it.
The trailer then comes to its grand finale: the deer seen in the trailer is observing a child on a table and it morphs into an alien. It’s a *very* traditional depiction of aliens: gray with big, black eyes and a large forehead.
Colman Domingo introduced Spielberg to his first CinemaCon with a montage of the filmmaker’s many movies. Spielberg walked out to John Williams’ “E.T.” theme and was greeted with a lengthy standing ovation.
The filmmaker was then presented with the MPA America250 Award by MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin. During his speech, Rivkin jokingly acknowledged that Spielberg is the reason for the PG-13 rating in Hollywood.
Spielberg started his speech by saying, “Haven’t done a western yet. That’s next.” He then promised that, while this is his first CinemaCon, it won’t be his last before talking about the importance of making movies for theaters and seeing movies in theaters. He thanked Universal for its commitment to a 45-day exclusive theatrical window.
“But today I’ve got to be greedy,” he said. “Do I hear 60 days? Do I hear 120 days? Those days gotta be coming back to us soon. We can all make it happen.” Domingo then sat Spielberg down for a conversation about “Disclosure Day” for the CinemaCon crowd, asking about how he runs his sets and where his interest in aliens comes from.
Spielberg shouted out “Project Hail Mary” for helping keep movies alive by bringing people out to theaters without massive IP.
“If we all we make is known, branded IP, then we’re gonna run out of gas, and we’re gonna run out of gas very quickly.”
“Disclosure Day” marks Spielberg’s first alien movie in more than 20 years, with his most recent feature in the extraterrestrial subgenre being 2005’s “War of the Worlds.” Prior to that, the director had made a few iconic movies in the alien space, such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”
Spielberg developed the story for “Disclosure Day” with a screenplay written by longtime collaborator David Koepp. The film stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson and Wyatt Russell.
Spielberg’s appearance at CinemaCon came at the end of the Universal Pictures/Focus Features panel, the first of two big studio presentations on the third day of CinemaCon. The Universal portion of the night started with Christopher Nolan presenting new footage of “The Odyssey,” his fantasy epic follow-up to Best Picture winner “Oppenheimer.”
“Disclosure Day” releases in theaters on June 12.
