How Much Of Disclosure Day Is Based On Real Life?

How Much Of Disclosure Day Is Based On Real Life?

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Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Disclosure Day (2026)

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day has been released, a new sci-fi film from the legendary director that continues his ongoing fascination regarding extraterrestrial life and whether humanity is alone in the universe. To that end, Disclosure Day does an excellent job blurring the lines between fact and fiction, interweaving some of the most famous real-life reports, accounts, and conspiracies about alien contact with Earth.

Throughout Spielberg’s new film and especially by Disclosure Day’s ending, the movie pulls heavily from some of the most famous UFO cases in history. Shown via classified archival footage, which is ultimately released to the public, the existence of extraterrestrial life and their encounters with humanity are confirmed, dating back nearly 80 years.

While some of the footage shown is original, with Air Force pilots encountering glowing balls of light or giant motherships in the atmosphere, others are based on real-life events many believe were instances involving actual alien life on Earth. Keeping that in mind, here’s how some of the Disclosure Day’s biggest moments and references connect to events and widely held beliefs in the real world.

1947 — Roswell, New Mexico

An Old Article About The Roswell UFO Incident In Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries Volume 5, Episode 4, “The Roswell UFO Incident”

The most obvious real-world influence on Disclosure Day is Roswell, New Mexico.

Within Spielberg’s new film, the infamous 1947 crash is the inciting incident that launches the government’s secret encounters with extraterrestrial life. In the movie, it’s revealed that the Roswell crash directly leads to the creation of Wardex (Watch, Recon, Develop, Extract), a private company that starts working alongside the Department of Defense to conceal evidence of alien contact from the public, while also profiting from reverse-engineering alien technology.

In the archival footage, government personnel are shown recovering alien bodies from a crashed spacecraft in the New Mexico desert, mirroring the popular conspiracy theories that have surrounded Roswell for decades, like the infamous Area 51. While the US military initially announced that a “flying disc” had been recovered, they later retracted before confirming that the discovered debris was nothing more than a weather balloon. Nevertheless, it’s been argued for decades that the government recovered extraterrestrial technology and biological remains, with Disclosure Day suggesting that Roswell was just the beginning.

1965 — Kecksburg, Pennsylvania

Kecksburg UFO-1

Another major event referenced amid the flood of released archival footage is the Kecksburg incident, often referred to as “Pennsylvania’s Roswell.” In December 1965, multiple residents reported seeing a fiery object in the sky before crashing into the woods. Witnesses described a large metallic object shaped like an acorn or bell, with strange markings resembling hieroglyphics on its surface. However, military personnel quickly arrived and restricted public access before removing whatever it was that had landed in Keckburg, fueling extraterrestrial speculation for years to come.

In Disclosure Day’s released footage, governments are indeed shown discovering a crashed craft in the woods with wreckage bearing strange markings. Likewise, the new movie’s footage shows at least one of the aliens still alive, connecting to past reveals in the movie that Wardex indeed had living alien subjects in its custody whom they interrogated and experimented on with invasive procedures, including In Vivo 17, the taller alien seen at the movie’s end, who was broken out by Colman Domingo’s Hugo and his fellow Wardex defectors.

1973 – Homestead Air Force Base

richard nixon richard nixon

One of Disclosure Day’s most memorable pieces of archival footage involves an alleged encounter between President Richard Nixon and legendary comedian Jackie Gleason back in 1973.

During the new movie, Wardex whistleblower Daniel Kellner shows Jane classified footage depicting Nixon meeting with Gleason at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida before showing him embalmed alien corpses stored within a secret and secure facility at the base.



















Reel 1 of 1 · 35mm
How Well Do You Know Steven Spielberg?
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

JawsSmile, you son of a…

E.T.Phone home

Indiana
JonesBelongs in a museum

Jurassic
ParkHold on to your butts

Saving
RyanEarn this

01

Jaws (1975) invented the summer blockbuster — partly because the three pneumatic sharks built for the shoot kept malfunctioning in Martha’s Vineyard’s salt water, forcing Spielberg to keep the creature offscreen. What nickname did the crew give the mechanical shark?




✓ Correct! Bruce — named after Spielberg’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer. Three 25-foot hydraulic sharks were built for about $250,000 each, and they kept sinking, shorting, and rusting. The forced minimalism (Williams’ dun-dun cue, a bobbing barrel, a ripple on the water) is now credited with making Jaws scarier than any visible shark could have. Pixar later named the shark in Finding Nemo “Bruce” as a tribute.

✗ Cut! The answer is Bruce — after Spielberg’s lawyer Bruce Ramer. “The Orca” was Quint’s boat. “Moby” and “Chompers” are red herrings. The three real hydraulic sharks kept breaking down so badly that Spielberg hid the shark for most of the film, which paradoxically became the masterstroke that invented modern suspense cinema.

02

In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Elliot lures the stranded alien out of the forest with a trail of candy. In one of film history’s most famous product-placement coups, Mars Inc. turned down the M&M’s offer, so Hershey’s swooped in — and sales of which sweet jumped around 65% overnight?




✓ Correct! Reese’s Pieces. Hershey’s paid roughly $1 million in promotional tie-ins (no upfront placement fee, but they agreed to run an E.T. marketing campaign) and watched sales explode as the film ran through summer 1982. It remains the textbook case taught in business schools for how screen placement can remake a product overnight. E.T. became the highest-grossing film of all time until Spielberg’s own Jurassic Park dethroned it in 1993.

✗ Cut! The answer is Reese’s Pieces. Mars Inc. turned down the M&M’s offer, reportedly because executives thought the alien was too ugly to associate with the brand — a decision they must have regretted all summer. Hershey’s took the deal, did about $1M in tie-in marketing, and saw Reese’s Pieces sales jump around 65%. It’s still the gold-standard case study in product placement.

03

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) nearly starred a different leading man. He’d already screen-tested with Karen Allen and signed on, but CBS refused to release him from his TV contract, so Harrison Ford was cast roughly three weeks before shooting. Who was the original Indy?




✓ Correct! Tom Selleck — locked in by CBS for Magnum P.I., which the network refused to delay. To twist the knife, a writers’ strike then pushed Magnum’s start back anyway, meaning Selleck would have been free in time. Harrison Ford (already Han Solo for George Lucas) stepped in late, and the rest is cinema history. Selleck has joked about it on every late-night circuit for 40 years.

✗ Cut! The answer is Tom Selleck. He had the part and the test footage with Karen Allen still exists. CBS wouldn’t let him out of Magnum P.I. — a writers’ strike then delayed the TV show anyway, which is the great “what if” of his career. Lucas and Spielberg turned to Harrison Ford, already lined up for Empire Strikes Back, just three weeks before Raiders began principal photography.

04

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) climaxes at Devils Tower as scientists greet the alien mothership by exchanging a five-note musical phrase — possibly the most famous handful of notes ever written for a film. The long-time Spielberg collaborator who composed it is…




✓ Correct! John Williams — Spielberg’s collaborator on nearly every film he’s made since The Sugarland Express in 1974. Williams reportedly tried hundreds of five-note combinations before Spielberg signed off on the Re-Mi-Do-Do-Sol sequence. Williams has five Oscars, 50-plus nominations, and his Spielberg credits include Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and more.

✗ Cut! The answer is John Williams — the only composer Spielberg has really used across his career. Jerry Goldsmith scored Alien and Poltergeist. Hans Zimmer is the Nolan guy. James Horner did Titanic and Avatar. Williams alone has scored nearly every Spielberg film since 1974 and personally wrote the five-note Close Encounters motif after trying hundreds of alternatives.

05

Jurassic Park (1993) was adapted from a 1990 novel whose author insisted on writing the first screenplay draft himself. Spielberg paid $1.5 million for the rights before the book was even published. Who wrote it?




✓ Correct! Michael Crichton — the Harvard-trained physician-turned-novelist who also wrote The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere, Disclosure and Rising Sun, and created ER. He sold Jurassic Park to Spielberg pre-publication. David Koepp rewrote Crichton’s draft into the film’s shooting script. The novel and film were such a phenomenon that Crichton wrote a sequel, The Lost World, explicitly because Spielberg asked for one.

✗ Cut! The answer is Michael Crichton. He wrote the novel in 1990, Spielberg bought the rights pre-publication for $1.5M, and Crichton did the first screenplay draft before David Koepp took it over. Crichton also created ER and wrote Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere, Disclosure and more. Stephen King, Clancy and Grisham are all bestsellers of the same era, but Jurassic Park is pure Crichton.

06

After a decade of being nominated and shut out by the Academy, Spielberg finally won his first Best Director Oscar in March 1994. The film — shot in Poland, mostly in black and white — also won Best Picture. Which one was it?




✓ Correct! Schindler’s List — which swept the 1994 Oscars with seven wins, including Best Picture and Spielberg’s first Best Director statue. He famously shot it in 72 days for about $22 million in parallel with prepping Jurassic Park, and took no salary. He’d later win a second Best Director for Saving Private Ryan (1998). The Color Purple went 0-for-11 at the Oscars in 1986 — one of the most notorious snubs ever.

✗ Cut! The answer is Schindler’s List. The Color Purple (1985) got 11 nominations and won zero. Empire of the Sun (1987) went home empty too. Amistad (1997) was respected but not a Best Director winner. Schindler’s List won seven Oscars in 1994 — Best Picture, Best Director and more — finally breaking Spielberg’s decade-long Academy drought.

07

Saving Private Ryan (1998) opens with a harrowing, nearly 24-minute combat sequence that veterans described as the most realistic war footage ever put on film. Which June 6, 1944 landing does it recreate?




✓ Correct! Omaha Beach — the bloodiest of the five D-Day sectors, where US forces took catastrophic casualties in the opening hours. Spielberg filmed the sequence on Curracloe Strand in Ireland with around 1,000 extras, desaturated the film stock, and removed the protective shutters from cameras to capture that signature jittery, hand-held look. The Ryan opening is routinely voted one of the greatest battle scenes in film history.

✗ Cut! The answer is Omaha Beach. Iwo Jima and Okinawa were Pacific, 1945. Sword Beach was the British D-Day sector. Omaha was the bloodiest of the Normandy landings, and it’s where Spielberg’s shaky-cam, desaturated, shutter-stripped sequence is set — shot on Curracloe Strand in Ireland with about 1,000 extras, many of them Irish Defence Forces reservists.

08

In 2022 Spielberg finally told his own origin story — a young Jewish boy named Sammy who falls in love with filmmaking, watches his parents’ marriage fracture, and learns that a camera can both reveal and lie. Michelle Williams got an Oscar nom for playing the mother. What’s the film called?




✓ Correct! The Fabelmans — co-written with his Lincoln and Munich collaborator Tony Kushner. Paul Dano plays the father (based on Spielberg’s engineer dad Arnold), Michelle Williams plays the mother (based on his artist mum Leah) and earned a Best Actress Oscar nom, Gabriel LaBelle plays young Sammy/Steven, and David Lynch cameos as John Ford in the film’s stunning final scene. Seven Oscar nominations in total, including Picture and Director.

✗ Cut! The answer is The Fabelmans. “Amblin” is the name of his 1968 short and his production company, not this film. The Fabelmans (2022), co-written with Tony Kushner, dramatises Spielberg’s New Jersey-to-Arizona-to-California childhood with the family name lightly fictionalised. It earned seven Oscar nominations including Picture, Director and a Best Actress nod for Michelle Williams.

End of Reel · House Lights Up
Your Director’s Cut

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Amblin auteur — or still shooting the first act?

This is inspired by real-life accounts shared by Gleason’s wife after his death, claiming that President Nixon personally showed Gleason alien bodies in the government’s possession. While no evidence has ever surfaced to corroborate or confirm the story, it’s remained a persistent piece of UFO folklore. Likewise, Spielberg incorporated the event into Disclosure Day’s continuity, suggesting that Nixon’s decision to share classified information, combined with the fallout from Watergate, is what led Wardex and the Department of Defense to keep future presidents in the dark about extraterrestrial activity, as they’d become civilians after 8 years anyway.

Abductions, Government Cover-Ups, & Real-Life Disclosures

Young Margaret in Disclosure Day With Aliens

Beyond specific historical events, Disclosure Day also incorporates several broader themes surrounding UFO culture and conspiracies for decades. For example, reports of alien abductions have existed for years, and abductions play a major role throughout the film. Josh O’Connor’s Daniel and Emily Blunt’s Margaret were abducted as children and given abilities that would help them communicate with the extraterrestrials years later.

Naturally, the movie also fully embraces the idea of major government cover-ups regarding the truth about alien life. The Wardex agents are basically the “Men In Black”, believed to be government officials concealing the evidence of extraterrestrial life for decades, an idea that’s become deeply ingrained in pop culture.

Likewise, Spielberg’s new movie is releasing at the perfect time considering the increased public discussion surrounding “unidentified aerial phenomena,” also known as UAPs (the newer term for UFOs). Indeed, the last few years have featured real-life disclosures of certain documents and declassified footage involving various unexplained objects recorded by military pilots.

Crop Circles

Daniel Kellner Crop Circles Disclosure Day

Crop circles receive a less direct explanation in Disclosure Day, but their inclusion is still pretty notable. At one point in the movie, Daniel and Hugo are trying to figure out their next moves to evade Wardex and release the stolen archive. While standing in a field, crop circles begin forming around Daniel, mirroring the same symbols shown on the alien devices used by Wardex and Hugo’s defectors.

Although many real-life crop circles have been revealed as human-made, some continue to argue that certain formations are connected to extraterrestrial activity, the most common theory suggesting that the designs function as navigational markers and/or cultural symbols belonging to alien visitors.

“The Greys” — The Most Commonly Accepted Alien Depiction

Grey Alien In Disclosure Day-1

Last but not least, one of the strongest connections between Disclosure Day and real-world UFO mythology is the aliens themselves. When they’re not disguised as animals to put humans at ease (another widely held belief), the aliens’ depiction aligns with alleged real-world encounters and abduction accounts: short bipeds with grey skin, large heads, and black eyes, most commonly referred to as “Greys”.

However, the movie also introduces a much taller Grey during the movie’s climax as the archived footage is released to the entire world, shown speaking with Daniel and Margaret so they can deliver its message to the world. This is “In Vivo 17”, one of the many living subjects held at Wardex, whom Hugo broke out before the events of the movie.

It’s worth noting that In Vivo 17’s design strongly recalls the singular taller alien featured at the end of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the director’s first major feature kickstarting his decades-long discussion about extraterrestrial life (that also includes E.T. The Extraterrestrial).

Disclosure Day is now playing in theaters from Amblin Entertainment and Universal Pictures.


disclosure-day-poster.jpg


Release Date

June 12, 2026

Runtime

145 Minutes

Cast

  • Headshot Of Emily Blunt

  • Headshot Of Josh O'Connor

    Josh O’Connor

    Daniel Kellner


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