Steven Spielberg believes we are not alone in this Universe. He said so out loud at SXSW today, and he made a movie about it.
Speaking at a keynote panel at the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival in Austin on Friday, the 79-year-old filmmaker was asked directly whether he believes in the real-life existence of aliens ahead of his new film Disclosure Day, which opens June 12.
He did not hedge.
“I don’t know any more than any of you do, but I have a very strong suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now, and I made a movie about that,” Spielberg told the audience during the panel, titled “The Big Picture with Steven Spielberg Live from SXSW,” moderated by podcaster Sean Fennessey.
He then went further. When former President Barack Obama recently said in a viral moment that aliens are “real,” Spielberg said his first reaction was immediate and completely on brand.
“Oh, my God, this is so great for Disclosure Day!” And when Obama walked back the comment days later to clarify he was referring to life somewhere in the cosmos rather than life on Earth, Spielberg was philosophical.
“No one should ever think that we are the only intelligent civilization in the entire universe,” he said.
“So I’ve been thinking as a kid that we were not alone. So that just goes without saying. The big question is: Are we alone now? And have we been alone over the last 80 years? Have we been alone over the last few thousand years?”
What Reinvigorated Spielberg?
Spielberg made Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977, and for nearly five decades did not return to the UFO genre directly.
What pulled him back, he said, was a pair of developments in the real world that made the subject feel newly urgent.
The first was The New York Times’ 2017 investigation revealing the existence of a secret government program that had been tracking UFOs, a story that cracked open serious mainstream conversation about unidentified aerial phenomena in a way nothing had before.
The second was the wave of congressional hearings that followed in subsequent years, featuring government whistleblowers testifying under oath about what they had seen and what they believed was being concealed.
Spielberg described those developments as “reinvigorating” him into making Disclosure Day, his first UFO film since Close Encounters and his first film since 2022’s The Fabelmans.
He has never seen a UFO himself. This is a point of genuine frustration. “I made a movie called Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I haven’t even had a close encounter of the first or second kind!” he said.
“Why haven’t I seen anything? Half of my friends have seen UFOs or UAPs. Where’s the justice of that? If you’re listening out there…” He left the sentence unfinished.
He is not afraid of what disclosure might mean. “I have no fears about that whatsoever,” he said. “I think our movie does take into consideration that social dislocation that could occur. If it was announced there is interaction [with aliens] that have been going on for decades, it’s going to cause a disruption in a lot of belief systems. But I don’t think it is a lethal disruption at all.”
What Is Disclosure Day About?
Disclosure Day is based on a story conceived by Spielberg, with a screenplay by his longtime collaborator David Koepp, the writer behind Jurassic Park, The Lost World, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Together, those films have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide. The film is produced by Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger under Amblin Entertainment for Universal Pictures.
The official logline is: “If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people.”
From what the trailers have revealed: Josh O’Connor plays a man who has stolen long-held government secrets about the existence of extraterrestrial beings, secrets he was paid to protect, and is determined to release them to the world.
Emily Blunt plays a Kansas City TV meteorologist who, while delivering a live weather segment on air, begins speaking in what turns out to be an alien language.
“Are they people?” she asks in the trailer. Colin Firth plays the antagonist — a man with access to advanced technology who is determined to prevent disclosure at any cost.
“That truth will upend all established order across the entire world,” Firth tells O’Connor. “If you do this, there’s no undoing it.” Colman Domingo and Wyatt Russell also star.
The trailers have drawn comparisons to Close Encounters in tone, a sense of cosmic awe layered over genuine thriller mechanics, with Spielbergian set pieces including what Empire describes as an excellent train sequence.
There are black-and-white flashes hinting at Roswell. The overall visual register has been compared to the cold, sleek aesthetic of A.I. and Minority Report. Janusz Kamiński, Spielberg’s cinematographer since Schindler’s List, shot the film.
John Williams composed the score, his 30th collaboration with Spielberg. Before the SXSW panel began, a musician took the stage and played a piece of music that repeatedly incorporated the iconic five-note sequence from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The crowd recognized it immediately.
Filming took place from February to May 2025 in New Jersey, New York City, Atlanta, and on Long Island. The film releases in IMAX on June 12.
The Film Nobody Would Let Him Make First Time
Spielberg reflected at length on the resistance he faced when he tried to make Close Encounters nearly 50 years ago, and how little has changed in terms of how the establishment treats the subject.
“Nobody would let me make Close Encounters because it was on the fringes of science and mythology, and so no one really got it. When I said, ‘I want to make a UFO movie,’ everybody thought, ‘You want to make a movie about The National Enquirer? You want to make a movie about the crackpot reporting of things that aren’t really occurring? You want to make a completely crazy fantasy film about something that isn’t happening?'”
The film that nobody wanted to make became one of the most beloved science fiction films ever produced.
The difference now, Spielberg suggested, is that the institutional resistance has cracked.
The congressional hearings, the declassified documents, the mainstream media investigations, they changed the conversation.
Disclosure Day arrives into a cultural moment that Close Encounters helped create and that has finally caught up to where he was in 1977.
Everything Else He Said At SXSW
The SXSW keynote covered considerably more than UFOs. Spielberg gave a passionate defense of the theatrical moviegoing experience that was vintage Spielberg, expansive, nostalgic, and pointed.
“If we’re just not making the same sequel over and over and over again, and it’s not the same Marvel title over and over and over again, we all get a real chance to experience something which is precious,” he said.
He described the communal experience of sitting in a dark theater with strangers as irreplaceable.
“There is a collective impulse from a good story that hits all of us at the same time in exactly the same way. There is something about community and communication and getting along with each other, and that happens in full movie theaters, and not sitting around living rooms watching on television.”
He took a deliberately playful shot at Timothée Chalamet, who has been the subject of widespread online mockery in recent days after making dismissive comments about opera and ballet.
“It happens in movies,” Spielberg said of the shared communal experience. “It happens at concerts. And it happens in ballet and opera!” The crowd, aware of the context, laughed loudly.
He revealed he has a Western in development, the fulfillment of a career-long ambition. “And it kicks ass,” he said. “There will be no stereotypes and no tropes.”
He said he still watches Lawrence of Arabia every year.
“The reason I watch that film is it keeps me humble. It reminds me that: ‘You will never be as good as David Lean.'”
Asked which of his films he considers underrated, he named the 1989 Richard Dreyfuss fantasy Always, an answer that will delight film obsessives who have long championed that underseen picture.
On his process, he revealed he storyboarded neither Schindler’s List nor Saving Private Ryan, two of the greatest films ever made.
“When I get to the set in the morning there is something that happens that is beautiful. There is an entire day of possibility yet undiscovered. What possibility will I choose first?”
On retirement: “I never want to quit.”
Spielberg achieved EGOT status earlier this year, winning a Grammy on February 1 to complete the set.
He is 79 years old. He has a UFO movie opening in June, a Western in development, and no plans to stop.
Disclosure Day opens in theaters and IMAX on June 12, 2026.
