“Disclosure Day” director Steven Spielberg has said that his latest film, which sees him return to the topic of UFOs and extra-terrestrial life forms, is “built on a foundation of truth.”
Few directors have explored onscreen over the years the possibility of life on other planets more thoughtfully than Spielberg, whose career includes films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “War of the Worlds.” In an extended interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” shared online this past weekend, Spielberg called “Disclosure Day,” which hits theaters in the U.S. on Friday, June 12, his “science fiction summation movie.”
“The characters and the events in the film are fictitious, of course, but even more than ‘Close Encounters,’ in terms of my own belief system, the credibility and what the movie is about is, ‘Isn’t it about time that we are told what’s been happening for the last 80, 90 years in our oceans and in our skies?’” Spielberg said, adding, “The movie is built on a foundation of truth, in my humble opinion.”
“Disclosure Days” focuses on the efforts of a select group of characters to bring the truth of alien life to all of humanity. Spielberg acknowledged in his conversation with “CBS Sunday Morning” how the film’s story makes it a “meaningful” companion to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
“It’s meaningful for me certainly and it’s also meaningful for a lot of people who really believe that we have been in communication but just not been told with, basically, off-planet civilizations,” the Oscar winner explained. “When the great unknown is actually known by some but not known by all of us, it’s that inequity that got me to write the story for ‘Disclosure Day.’”
Spielberg’s comments line up with the overall, recent marketing strategy for “Disclosure Day.” The film’s final trailer, notably, concludes with the filmmaker himself admitting, “I used to say to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of this turned out to be true?’ I’m now thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful for people to know all of this is true?’”
“Of course, there are conspiracy theories, but the actual idea that we have been under observation and been interacted with is something that I have always hung on to as a core truth,” Spielberg told “CBS Sunday Morning.” He went on to note that “core truth” has been at the center of a number of movies in his filmography.
“[It’s] inspired movies like ‘Close Encounters,’ like ‘E.T.,’ even in a farcical way, in a comedic way the ‘Men in Black’ series of films that I co-produced,” the filmmaker said. “[It’s all been] leading up to, as I call it, my science fiction summation movie, which is ‘Disclosure Day.’”
You can watch Spielberg’s full “CBS Sunday Morning” conversation yourself in the video above.
