Half a century after Steven Spielberg challenged audiences to think about what lies beyond the starry canopy that defines our universe in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the director is again challenging accepted precepts of faith and singular belief in a supreme being.
His new film Disclosure Day sees him revisit the possibility of aliens: “I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here,” he outlined in an interview with CBS News.
First he outlined the themes behind the movie and the answers it (possibly) posed to questions of life, faith and mortality.
Steven Spielberg attends the “Disclosure Day” Paris photocall at Shangri-La Hotel Paris on June 01, 2026 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pierre Mouton/Getty Images for Universal Pictures)
“‘Disclosure Day’ is about how, if somebody had the power and if somebody had possession of the entire archive of visual evidence of what’s been happening for the last 80 years, what would happen if they decided to do a data dump across the entire world all at once?” Spielberg said, adding it is as much a “chase” movie as it is a reflection on our very being.
“And the people who are trying to stop that data dump from happening, that is basically the core of this chase movie.”
Then he dived more deeply into God – any God – which acts as a supreme being above and beyond us all. He mused:
The movie takes the position of the believers, or the curious, the ones that have been deeply affected by this. The Emily Blunt character (Margaret Fairchild), you know, something has happened to her. She has no idea what it is. She has to try to understand why this has upended her life.
And the movie also takes the position of the church. What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God our God only on this planet? Or is God a god for every system where there’s civilization and intelligent life, and even developing life?
Spielberg feels Christians will find themselves asking of their faith and their beliefs as the movie takes the absolute position of the Church.
He says the questions need answers or will Christians simply see the work as a piece of entertainment predicated on Hollywood’s self-serving need to make money while touching on personal fears.
Disclosure Day is the 79-year-old’s first summer movie in a decade.
As Breitbart News previously noted, the movie stars Josh O’Connor as a cybersecurity whistle-blower with government evidence, long suppressed, chronicling a history of alien encounters.
Guiding him in his escape from a corporate executive (Colin Firth) trying to keep it all under wraps is the disclosure movement’s leader (Colman Domingo). Meanwhile, a meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) begins having a mysterious epiphany.
Disclosure Day is set to hit theaters June 12. The film also stars Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell and Henry Lloyd-Hughes.