Disclosure Day

Development

In the summer of 2023, Steven Spielberg spent two months writing a 50–60 page story outline that would serve as the basis of Disclosure Day.^[22] Spielberg was inspired by the 2017 article "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program", published in The New York Times, which he described as having rekindled his interest in the subject.^[23] In April 2024, it was publicly announced that Spielberg's next directing project would be a UFO film based on his own original idea, with David Koepp, who had previously collaborated with Spielberg on multiple films, writing the screenplay from Spielberg's original story.^[24]

After receiving the initial treatment from Spielberg, via email, Koepp would develop forty-two drafts for the film's screenplay, the most of his career.^[25] On collaborating with Spielberg, Koepp went on to say: "It's something he had carried around in his head for decades [...] I felt a particular obligation to not fuck it up [...] you're always trying to be deferential to where the idea comes from. With Jurassic Park, I'm trying to respect the book as much as possible; War of the Worlds, same thing; Indiana Jones? Talk about deferential [...] But in this, I'm helping this guy tell his story, even as it grew into my story too."^[26] Koepp avoided the word "alien" in the script to prevent political distractions, saying, "'Aliens' also has a second meaning in terms of immigration. And we didn't want anyone to be able to dismiss anything or be distracted. So we use 'extraterrestrial', we use 'biological life forms', 'non-human biologics'. There's a number of other terms that we use instead."^[27]

In May 2024, Universal Pictures was announced as the film's distributor.^[28] The following month, Emily Blunt was cast in the lead role.^[29] From August to December, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Josh O'Connor, and Wyatt Russell joined the cast.^[b] This project marks the third film Spielberg had cast Domingo in (including an unrealized George Gershwin film) and the second film he had cast Hewson and Elizabeth Marvel in.^[35][36] In addition to Domingo, Hewson and Marvel, many of the core cast (including Blunt, Firth, O'Connor, and Henry Lloyd-Hughes) were offered their roles without having to audition.^[37][38][39] Hewson revealed that for her audition process, Spielberg met with her, via Zoom, telling her that he has "a script I want you to read; your character's Jane." After being hand-delivered the script by someone from Spielberg's team, the pair took one more Zoom meeting, during which Hewson pitched Spielberg some ideas for the character, and was offered the role by the end of the week.^[40]

In May 2025, Paul Tazewell revealed that he would serve as costume designer, marking his second collaboration with Spielberg following West Side Story (2021).^[41]

Filming

Principal photography (under the title Non-View) began on February 26, 2025, in Montville, New Jersey and New York City.^[9] A casting call for Long Island–based background actors to play "wrestling fans" for a scene to be shot on March 4, 2025, was issued on January 16, 2025.^[42][43][44] The wrestling match scene was shot in the Paramount Theater in Huntington in Long Island, New York.^[45] Subsequent casting calls in March 2025 sought background talent in the Hudson Valley area of New York state and the Middlesex County area of New Jersey. The Middlesex County casting call exclusively requested participants who could drive their own vehicles in the film, while the Hudson Valley casting call additionally requested actors to play diner patrons and hotel guests.^[46][47] Additional casting calls sought actors to portray North Korean soldiers.^[48]

Exteriors of the freight train sequence were filmed on the Cape May Seashore Lines railroad in Southern New Jersey in March 2025.^[49] Lloyd-Hughes revealed that a real train was used for the sequence with a real car crashing into it, and that he drove the car into the train tracks himself.^[50] Spielberg spent three weeks, alongside his cast and crew, to shoot the set piece with a few days dedicated to filming Lloyd-Hughes crashing into the car carrying Blunt and O'Connor.^[50] In early April, filming took place in the McGinley Square neighborhood of Jersey City.^[48]

The New Jersey Innovation Institute at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey was used as the KCXE television studio.^[51] Scenes set in the NBC control room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza were filmed on location there, with real newsroom employees acting in the film in supporting roles.^[51] The West Virginia safe house where Daniel and Jane hide was a set built at Fosterfields in Morris Township, New Jersey.^[51] The convent exterior was the Community of St John Baptist in Mendham Township, New Jersey.^[51] The quarry car chase was filmed at Dibbles Quarry in Elka Park, New York.^[51] The classified footage of extraterrestrial encounters was filmed at an industrial site in Staten Island.^[51]

The exterior scenes of the Wardex headquarters were filmed at the Canon Americas Headquarters in Melville, New York.^[52] Studio filming took place at Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where the large Wardex Headquarters interior set was built.^[51] In June, Koepp confirmed production on the film had wrapped in late May.^[53]

For the scene where Margaret speaks an alien language while on-camera, Blunt was told her dialogue would be enhanced using AI post-processing techniques. Instead, she used her vocal training to create a distinct set of vocalizations and performed them in a single four-minute long take.^[54] However, Spielberg later denied Blunt's claims and said he "would never have used AI" for the film.^[55]

Cinematography

Longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kamiński served as cinematographer, filming the project predominately on 35 mm film using Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras equipped with C and T series anamorphic format lenses for a 2.39:1 aspect ratio.^[56] Certain low light scenes were filmed using the digital Sony CineAlta Venice 2 camera.^[56] For the freight train sequence, Kamiński crafted a massive crane shot from 50 feet away as the camera arrived on the actor's reactions.^[50] "It was very difficult. 90% of that is live photography. Everything you see we created on camera," Kamiński explained, adding, "Sometimes the train would not move, such as when Emily and Josh were climbing onto the train. We had that car attached, along with effects like smoke, wind, and dust. Brian Machleit, the stunt coordinator, spent several days with the second team on the active railroad track we had under control, where the train was moving at maybe 15 miles an hour, and he made all the wide shots. We sped it up a tiny bit, added some extra trees, and there was one little moment where we did face replacement on the stunt people, but that was it."^[57]

Production design

Adam Stockhausen, the film's production designer, previously collaborated with Spielberg on Bridge of Spies (2015), Ready Player One (2018), and West Side Story. Stockhausen collaborated with VFX Studios Framestore and Territory for the production.^[58] For the Wardex command center, Stockhausen drew architectural and interior design inspiration from such real-world structures as the old AT&T headquarters in New York, NASA's mission control center, images of military "war rooms", train station hubs, and Japanese brutalism. "The initial discussions were just about the nature of the work that was going on there and trying to make this exciting space for it," Stockhausen explained.^[58]

Visual effects

The visual effects were developed by Digital Domain, Storm Studios and Wētā FX, overseen by production visual effects supervisors Matthew E. Butler and Joel Behrens, and production visual effects producer Lauren Ritchie.^[59]

Theatrical

Originally set to be released on May 15, 2026,^[28] Disclosure Day had its world premiere at Le Grand Rex in Paris on June 2, 2026,^[74] followed by the British premiere at Cineworld in Leicester Square, London on June 4,^[75] and the American premiere at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City on June 8.^[76]

The film opened theatrically in IMAX in the United Kingdom on June 10, 2026,^[77] and released in the United States on June 12.^[78] It also received a limited release on 70 mm film prints blown up from the native 35 mm print, in addition to other premium large formats.^[56]

Home media

Disclosure Day was released on digital streaming and VOD platforms on July 21, 2026.^[79] It is scheduled to be released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on August 25.^[80]

Box office

As of July 27, 2026^[update], Disclosure Day has grossed $116 million in the United States and Canada, and $123.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $239.2 million.^[4][5]

By May 29, 2026, prior to the film's release in the United States and Canada, Boxoffice Pro projected an opening weekend of $40–50 million.^[81] On June 10, Deadline Hollywood projected an opening weekend of around $65 million worldwide.^[82]

The film made $6.5 million during Thursday previews in the United States.^[83] After making $19.1 million on Friday (including previews), it ended up debuting at No. 1 with $44 million from 3,824 screens at the domestic box office and an additional $49 million from 73 overseas markets, for a worldwide total opening of $93 million.^[84] 60% of moviegoers were 35 or older, with 48% of the gross coming from premium large formats.^[84] It is also the highest-opening for a Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment original title not based on any previous IP.^[85] When analyzing the film's first weekend box office performance, David A. Gross from the box office newsletter FranchiseRe noted that international territories could help the lifetime gross of the film in the long run, saying, "Sci-fi thrillers do well abroad. These are visual stories that everyone understands."^[84]

In its second weekend, it came in second place and dropped 60%, earning $17 million domestically and $50 million internationally for a worldwide gross of $161 million.^[86] In its third weekend, it grossed $8.2 million, dropping 53%.^[87] The global gross of the film over the first two weeks is higher than the combined total of 2021's West Side Story's $76 million and 2022's The Fabelmans' $45.6 million, cementing Disclosure Day as Spielberg's highest-grossing film since 2018's Ready Player One, which grossed $607.9 million worldwide.^[88]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 425 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "A humanistic variation on one of Steven Spielberg's most revisited themes, Disclosure Day's breathless pursuit of optimism in an age of conspiracy gets its biggest boost from career-highlight work by Emily Blunt."^[90] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 63 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[91] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, with PostTrak reporting that 61% of audiences say they would "definitely recommend" it.^[85]

The film received praise for Spielberg's direction, Blunt's performance, Williams' musical score, as well as the storytelling and visuals.^[92] Deadline Hollywood's Pete Hammond praised the film, writing that it "has so much more on its mind than just to entertain" and Spielberg "hasn't lost his own sense of wonder".^[93] Writing for Gizmodo, Germain Lussier called it a "sci-fi spectacle" in which Spielberg "puts the audience in the palm of his hand and takes us on an emotionally charged ride filled with mystery, excitement, spectacle, and meaning".^[94] David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a B+ grade, writing that it "might be pitched as a spiritual sequel to Close Encounters, but the movie itself—typically earnest and fantastic entertainment, as fluid in its direction as it can be clumsy with its ideas—is in far more immediate conversation with Spielberg's recent films".^[95] The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney called it "spellbinding" and "an essential addition to Spielberg's rich body of work", while also highly praising Blunt's performance as "simply breathtaking and never more magnetic".^[1]

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave the film four out of five stars, writing that it is "never anything other than entertaining and grade-A fun; rare enough in the movies or anywhere else, rocketing along with barnstorming set-pieces, exhilarating chases, funny lines and a career-topper of a performance from Blunt".^[96] Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it a "vigorous and diverting ride", but felt that Spielberg "seems to be not so much leading as following the decades of lore and mythology—and gobbledygook" as the film does not reach "the contact high of awe that Close Encounters did".^[97] Francesca Steele of The i Paper lauded Blunt's performance and described Disclosure Day as a "giant, glorious blockbuster with a huge heart: despite its bleak outlook on global self-interest poisoning contemporary politics, it's deeply embedded with a very Spielbergian hopefulness for human empathy".^[98]

In a negative review, The Telegraph's Robbie Collin deemed the film "unquestionably a big swing" that "only glancingly connects", finding the plot "woolly and the tone a bungled mix of solemn and silly".^[99] For the BBC, Nicholas Barber also gave it a negative review, calling it "a flimsy, outdated car-chase thriller with no ideas about aliens that we haven't heard before".^[100] Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times criticized the visual effects, writing that the "CG animals and aliens look stiff, other than a nifty close-up of an eyeball".^[101]

The performance of Courtney Grace, a former news anchor who plays the unnamed NBC anchorwoman in the final act of the film, received particular praise from critics and generated some of the most buzz online.^[c] Karina Adelgaard of Heaven of Horror opined that Grace "delivers the most heartwrenching, honest, and breathtaking" performance and called her "simply mesmerizing".^[107] Grace admitted that she did not know how critical her role would be before watching the film for the first time at the U.S. premiere in New York City.^[108]

Accolades