Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Disclosure Day.Disclosure Day writer David Koepp discloses the story behind the movie’s alien design.
When the film’s aliens aren’t disguised as animals and instead appear in their true form, they have the classic look of extraterrestrials, including a large head, black eyes, gray skin, long, thin fingers, and an overall humanoid shape. Between the memories of what happened to Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) as children, the classified footage that is released, and the alien unveiled in the studio during Disclosure Day‘s ending, the creatures are also shown to vary significantly in size.
In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley for Disclosure Day, Koepp explained that he and director Steven Spielberg wanted to “respect the lore” and “cultural memory” of aliens. The movie is not meant to subvert what audiences know and associate with aliens and is instead about directly confronting and embracing these theories. Check out Koepp’s comments below:
I think that that was important to both Steven and I. Steven first said, “I want to respect the lore that’s out there. There’s a cultural memory of how things are and what might have happened. And I don’t want to fly in the face of that. ” And I took that to mean we’re not making a movie that says everything you always thought is wrong. We’re making a movie that says everything you always thought is right and here’s abundant proof of it. And that was the distinction. I think that we could have made up a bunch of stuff that has no basis in lore or cultural memory and hope that it would become new memory. But we thought this isn’t really about redefining that story. This is about acknowledging the fact that a whole bunch of s*** has been going on for 79 years that we weren’t told about.
Spielberg and Koepp’s approach to the aliens also explains why viewers do not end up learning too much about them. The extraterrestrials have extraordinary technology that can make telepathy and invisibility possible, which Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) and Margaret use to their advantage, but these devices are never explained in-depth, nor is the aliens’ reason for being on Earth revealed. These are other ways of respecting the lore and cultural memory that audiences already have, as is confirming that events like the Roswell Incident are part of the history when the classified footage is aired.
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?
Instead, the focus is primarily on the human characters, particularly Margaret and Daniel, and how the disclosure of alien life has the potential to unite humanity and even prevent another world war from breaking out. Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) mentions at one point that empathy is one of the aliens’ greatest evolutionary advantages, which ties into the movie’s overarching themes and the intention behind the hopeful, optimistic ending.
Based on Disclosure Day‘s reviews, these narrative decisions seem to be mostly resonating with critics and general audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a “Certified Fresh” 80% Tomatometer score based on 292 reviews and a 73% Popcornmeter score based on more than 2,500 ratings. In ScreenRant‘s review, Alex Harrison gave the film nine out of 10 stars and described it as “an attempt to meet this cynical, divided moment and treat it with empathy, as well as with a healthy dose of good, ol’ fashioned entertainment.”
With a $94 million worldwide opening weekend box office debut, which is significantly higher than the projected $65 million, Disclosure Day‘s box office is also off to a strong start. Despite this, there is unlikely to be a sequel delving more deeply into the aliens or the aftermath of disclosure, especially given Koepp’s comments about how he and Spielberg approached their depiction of the extraterrestrials. The ending is also designed to be both uplifting and ambiguous and does not directly set up any kind of follow-up.
In addition to Blunt, O’Connor, Firth, and Domingo, the Disclosure Day cast of characters also features Eve Hewson as Daniel’s girlfriend Jane, Wyatt Russell as Margaret’s boyfriend Jackson, Elizabeth Marvel as Sister Maura, and Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Casper Boyd, who is in charge of Scanlon’s security.
