Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 145 minutes
Release Date: June 12th, 2026 (USA)
Studio: Universal Pictures
Director(s): Steven Spielberg
Writer(s): David Koepp / Steven Spielberg (story)

I will not be anyone’s religion.

The debate surrounding classified information and whistleblower criminality has always centered on safety. But anyone paying attention to the world’s descent into partisanship, tribalism, and fascism knows it’s truly about power. Because that’s what knowing gets you. That’s why the public can’t know. Not because they won’t understand or because that knowledge will drive them insane. No, it’s because true equality means there are no more secrets to control.

Disclosure Day plays like a re-imagining of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third fifty years later rather than a companion piece. It not only takes pains to ensure the two people pulled into its unexplainable orbit via visions and invisible strings (Josh O’Connor’s Daniel and Emily Blunt’s Margaret) have no children to beat the deadbeat allegations Richard Dreyfus couldn’t, but it also augments its collision course with concrete meaning and purpose.

That’s not to say Close Encounters needed either. It was made in an era devoid of the technologies that have flattened our world in ways that were supposed to unite us. Sadly, that fire hose of information only separated us more by forcing its facilitators to find new ways of profiting from it through misinformation and fear mongering. They’ve weaponized our ability to connect to prove how much the world hates us rather than how much we must empathize with them.

David Koepp’s script is therefore less about the wonder of discovery than the reality that our humanity has been lost. That faith in God to save us above others has let us stop seeing our neighbors as family. That religion has provided us yet another means to feel superior over our fellow man. And it’s only through the knowledge that we aren’t alone that we can truly reconnect with who we are. That borders and nations are irrelevant. That we’re all in this together.

So, Disclosure Day is a comment on jingoistic invasion actioners like Independence Day. They show humanity rallying together in a show of force much like the rising tide of nationalism has. Why? Because it leans into that notion of power. It keeps the military industrial complex alive. But what if we rallied around peace? What if we remembered to extend a hand rather than slap one away? That we can care for strangers and family alike. That we can be better.

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L to R: Colman Domingo is Hugo Wakefield, Tommy Martinez is Santiago, Emily Blunt is Margaret Fairchild, and Josh O’Connor is Dr. Daniel Kellner in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.