Steven Spielberg took the stage at CinemaCon for the first time in his career to promote his upcoming Universal release, Disclosure Day.
After an introduction from star Colman Domingo, the filmmaker received rapturous applause from the annual convention of movie theater owners in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Spielberg accepted the Motion Picture Association’s America250 Award from the group’s chair, Charles Rivkin, in celebration of the director’s work that embraces the nation’s wonders.
“I haven’t done a Western yet — that’s next,” the 79-year-old director said. He noted that his first CinemaCon stage appearance had been great: “This will not be my last, I promise.”
He recalled his transformative first visit to the cinema: “Nothing could compete with sitting in the first three rows of a movie palace, watching a Cecil B. DeMille epic with color by Technicolor. Nothing would ever be the same.”
Spielberg admitted, “Sometimes, it feels to me like a cage fight between the small screen and the big screen.” He noted that the theatergoing experience was “clobbered” by COVID but added, “There was reason for hope.” He went on to praise projects like Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which counted Spielberg as a producer.
Then, the filmmaker sat down on stage with Domingo to discuss the exhibition business, with Spielberg recalling inviting his boyhood friends over to his parents’ home to screen popular titles. “I made money by charging 12 cents on popcorn,” he quipped.
Turning to Disclosure Day, the director explained that he has long been fascinated by the potential for extraterrestrial life. “I’ve been curious ever since I was a little kid about what’s happening in the night sky, what’s happening in the sky during the daytime,” Spielberg said. He remembered his dad telling him about “advanced civilizations” that didn’t exist on Earth.
Spielberg recalled a 2017 New York Times story about a Navy pilot spotting something via camera that could not be explained. “In 2017, I got very curious again,” he said, pointing out that his alien feature Close Encounters of the Third Kind was made 50 years ago. “Half a century later, I made Disclosure Day with certainty that there is a lot more truth than fiction to what you’re going to see on June 12.”
He said of Disclosure Day, “I truly believe that this movie is going to answer questions and cause you to ask a lot of questions.” He also teased, “This movie is an experience, and all you need to get from the beginning to the end is a seatbelt.”
Spielberg introduced new footage from the film, which stars Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor, chronicling what might happen if humanity were to receive proof of non-human intelligent life. Disclosure Day marks Spielberg’s first new movie since 2022’s The Fabelmans and also stars Domingo, Colin Firth, Wyatt Russell and Eve Hewson.
The footage shows Blunt as a meteorologist who finds herself unable to speak during a live segment. In describing the viral footage of Blunt’s weather broadcast, O’Connor notes that he can understand the gibberish that she is saying: “It’s math.”
Viewers see an emotional meeting between O’Connor and Blunt. “I know you,” he says, to which she replies, “I know you, too.” There was also plenty of action in store, as Blunt tries to jump from a car onto a moving train. The footage ends with the movie’s first glimpse at its alien life form.
Disclosure Day represents Spielberg’s return to the UFO genre, and fans have speculated that it could be a closet sequel to 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Blunt recently told Empire magazine, “There are definitely questions posed by Close Encounters that are answered in Disclosure Day.”
When appearing at the South by Southwest Film & TV festival last month, Spielberg said, “I don’t know any more than any of you do, but I have a very strong suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now — and I made a movie about that.”
The footage comes one day after Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna’s deadline came and went for the Pentagon to declassify and release several specific video files that she’s requested which purportedly show previously unseen instances of UAP/UFOs activity.
On Tuesday, Luna posted the following update on X: “No one from the Pentagon had responded until we reached out, and it appears that someone did not pass the letter to the appropriate authorities. How convenient. Nonetheless, we will be getting the requested list. We are not waiting for a briefing at some unspecified future date. The Secretary of War is someone I consider a friend and someone who backs the President. The President has authorized the release, so whoever is trying to be cute at the Pentagon can take a hike.”
Universal can only hope any such videos — which would doubtless help generate buzz for the film — will be released in time for the opening weekend of Disclosure Day, which comes out June 12.
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