Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is the stealth sequel that completes a 49-year trilogy
Steven Spielberg says Disclosure Day is the stealth capstone to a 49-year sci-fi arc, quietly linking back to two of his most iconic alien classics and closing out a trilogy you didn’t even know he’d been building. Not a direct sequel—more a full-circle finale to the themes that launched him.
If you thought Spielberg was done saying anything new about aliens, apparently not — he's just linked his latest film, 'Disclosure Day', straight back to the beginnings of his sci-fi career. No, there’s no literal sequel business going on here with government agents popping up from old scripts. This one’s a full-circle moment that, to be honest, only Spielberg could pull off so quietly.
The Spielberg 'Not-Quite-A-Trilogy'
'Disclosure Day' stands alone in terms of story — it’s not carrying over characters or story threads from his previous blockbusters. Spielberg dreamt up the idea himself, while David Koepp handled the screenplay. Even so, Spielberg is calling this his 'final chapter', one that rounds off a trilogy that apparently stretches back 49 years.
Chatting with ScreenRant, Spielberg explained how he sees a line running from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (back in 1977) through 'E.T.' and finally to this new release. His words — and I’ll quote him here, since he put it best:
'My first foray into confronting a huge event that would change the world if known by the world,' is how he described 'Close Encounters', calling it 'the first time an advanced off-world civilization appeared to us and started communicating with us.'
The funny thing is, what drew him back to aliens wasn’t nostalgia or studio pressure, it was all the real-life UFO chatter, especially with those famous whistleblowers coming forward since 2017. Spielberg said:
'With the whistleblowers that came forward starting in 2017 and even before that, with all the testimony about people saying things are happening, and whoever has the archive of the truth is not disclosing it to anybody, I started getting really interested in what I would call my summation film.'
What Links the Three Films?
- 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' was Spielberg’s 'first act' — big event, earth meets aliens for the first time, whole world’s in on it (sort of).
- 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial' was his 'second act' — same genre, but stripped down to a small, suburban story about one lonely alien. No world governments, just a bunch of kids and a pet alien on a BMX.
- 'Disclosure Day' brings it all out into the open: 'Unlike Devil's Tower and that meeting of the minds, finally the truth is there for all of us to behold.' In other words, what if everyone on Earth actually knew what was happening?
They're not connected by plot or recurring characters, which you'll notice immediately if you’ve seen even a single one of these films. Even the aliens look completely different every time — deliberately so. This so-called trilogy is all about themes: secrecy, contact, and what it actually means when the truth finally goes public.
How’s the Film Doing?
'Disclosure Day' isn’t just coasting on Spielberg's legacy — it’s actually landed an 80% fresh rating over on Rotten Tomatoes. Box office-wise, it pulled in $93 million globally across its opening weekend, which is nothing to sneeze at for a film that’s as much about ideas as it is about spectacle.