When Steven Spielberg’s new alien film Disclosure Day reaches the theaters, he wants it to be his best work in the genre. The revered auteur spared no effort in pursuing his goal. For starters, he pressed David Koepp to rework the script multiple times, and it took the acclaimed screenwriter 42 tries to get it right. He also collaborated with renowned figures like Academy Award-winning costume designer Paul Tazewell and esteemed composer John Williams to ensure an excellent production.
However, the defining element of the director’s new alien movie is the fact that it’s less speculative than his previous UFO flicks. From E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Steven Spielberg’s fascination with aliens has led to several memorable cinematic masterpieces. Disclosure Day is poised to be different. Spielberg is approaching it from a realistic perspective, and here’s what to know about the real-life events that inspired the movie.
What Real-Life UFO Report Inspired Disclosure Day?
Spielberg discussed his new alien movie on IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson. He told the former first lady that Disclosure Day isn’t speculative like Close Encounters. “There’s a lot of [things in] Close Encounters that I made up, but there’s a lot in Disclosure Day that I don’t really feel I needed to make up,” he said, specifying that real-life UFO reports piqued his interest in making another alien movie. The EGOT filmmaker referred to a 2023 New York Times article while discussing the film’s premise.
“It was a story influenced by a whistleblower that released some footage to The New York Times, and it was a story written by, I believe, Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Keane,” he said. “It was a story about what Navy pilots had photographed on their FLIR systems, their infrared systems, their forward-facing infrared systems of a UFO, now called a UAP,” the director continued. Spielberg was clearly referring to a story dating back to December 2017, when Cooper, Blumenthal, and Keane co-authored a piece that revealed a secret Pentagon program investigating UAP.
The shadowy project, guised as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, investigated reports of unidentified flying objects for years. Most of the $22 million spent on the project went to Robert Bigelow’s aerospace research company. And according to the article, the billionaire entrepreneur isn’t only “absolutely convinced” that aliens are real; he also believes that UFOs have visited Earth.
Did David Grusch Inspire Josh O’Connor’s Character?
The English actor plays Daniel Kellner, a whistleblower determined to reveal the truth about aliens. The character may have been inspired by David Grusch, a decorated intelligence officer who worked with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force among other intelligence organizations. Years after the 2017 article published on The New York Times, Grusch made news headlines as a whistleblower, shedding new light on covert programs revolving around aliens.
Also a veteran of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Grusch claimed that the secret programs running for years took possession of intact and partially intact alien craft. He testified that these craft of non-human origin are being analyzed and hidden from Congress and oversight authorities. He told Congress that there’s been a longstanding conflict instigated by the race to obtain and exploit recovered physical material from UAP crashes for reverse engineering.
In another viral article published on The Debrief in June 2023, Grusch alleged that he has been subjected to unfair and illegal retaliation because of his extensive disclosures about the covert UAP programs. This is akin to Kellner’s fate in Disclosure Day. The character finds himself pitted against agents of a sinister corporation after stumbling upon classified information about the organization’s shady extraterrestrial dealings.
The Real-World Question Disclosure Day Poses
By and large, the new alien movie mirrors Spielberg’s latest convictions about alien life. But more than that, the film poses a real-world question. If extraterrestrial beings are real and already on Earth, is humanity ready to learn that truth and confront what it might entail? “That’s the question that my movie tries to answer,” said the director. “Our movie is about what would happen if all this information was disclosed all at the same time. How would that affect everything?” He added. Check out why Erik Per Sullivan said no to the Malcolm in the Middle revival.
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