DISCLOSURE DAY movie poster | ©2026 Universal

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell
Writer: David Koepp, story by Steven Spielberg
Director: Steven Spielberg
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Release Date: June 12, 2026

DISCLOSURE DAY begins in what in other movies would be the middle, or at least the end of the first act. A man, who we will soon learn is scientist and mathematical genius Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), is bound to a chair. A group of men in dark suits, led by Dr. Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), want both an object and information Daniel has. Daniel is just worried about what they’ve done with his girlfriend, Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson).

Daniel manages to escape with both Jane and the object. He gets intermittent guidance from former coworker Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who is involved in constructing what looks like a set on a soundstage with his crew as he tries to guide Daniel to him.

Meanwhile, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a California transplant who is currently the weather reporter on a local station in Missouri, wakes up with her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell). She is thinking maybe they should move again; he would like to stay put.

Then a little red bird flies into the kitchen for a minute, delighting both Maggie and Jackson. The bird flies away and Maggie begins talking conversationally to Jackson in Russian, although she neither knows the language nor realizes she’s no longer speaking English.

Waving off Jackson’s concern, Maggie heads in to the TV station, which is reporting on the possibility of imminent nuclear war. Maggie is still supposed to talk about the weather but, with the cameras on her, she lapses into an inhuman dialect of clicks and moans, finally collapsing onto the floor.

The broadcast of this goes out live and gets Scanlon’s attention. Soon Maggie is also fleeing his clutches and following her instincts, which push her toward joining up with Daniel, even though they don’t know each other.

Directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Koepp from Spielberg’s story, DISCLOSURE DAY easily fits as the third piece of Spielberg’s unofficial alien trilogy that began with 1977’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and continued with 1982’S E.T.: THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL. It is full of wonder, joy, and optimism.

It’s also got some of the action Spielberg is justly famed for, including a hair-raising car-vs.-car-vs.-train sequence. Even though we know what the outcome has to be (it’s in the middle of the movie), it’s a nerve-grabber.

The acting is also excellent, with Blunt and O’Connor both conveying fear and confusion along with enormous moral rectitude. Hewson and Firth both handle layered roles with grace and alacrity. Domingo, tasked with delivering most of the exposition, does so with a lot of heart, and Russell provides a nice low-key comedic foil as the voice of disbelief.

DISCLOSURE DAY is entertaining and beguiling. It has been made with optimism, and not just in its subject matter. It hopes that its viewers – at least, enough of them – will hang in with its essence of innocence and goodwill.

However, DISCLOSURE DAY has to contend with two meta questions that CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and E.T. did not. Neither of these queries are about whether aliens exist and/or are visiting Earth, but they are hard to avoid contemplating, given its convictions that the truth, if it can get out there, will be credible and have major impact on daily life around the world.

One: is society as a whole really shockable any more, especially in America? Scanlon and Jane are both terrified of some kind of societal collapse resulting from the revelation, but in reality, we’ve undergone a whole lot of horrifying and sometimes immediately dangerous revelations without a response that unleashes mass hysteria.

Two: what would constitute proof that a majority of people would accept as the truth? Seeing something on the news, depending which news one is watching, doesn’t necessarily convince anyone of anything, especially these days. Presumably the characters in DISCLOSURE DAY have seen films not unlike this one, with special effects that look like the onscreen evidence created for the movie’s special effects. It feels like the initial result would be folks arguing over whether this is real or not, never mind the implications, and then opinions would harden into divergent beliefs, depending on what best suits an individual’s views.

Ultimately, the full movement of DISCLOSURE DAY doesn’t depend on this. It keeps us engrossed by the journey of its people, and that makes it worthwhile.

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