Steven Spielberg reveals the real UFO encounter reports behind Disclosure Day’s aliens
Steven Spielberg says he modeled Disclosure Day’s aliens on real UFO accounts, and the film is already rocketing to a strong global box office opening.
Steven Spielberg is back in first-contact mode with Disclosure Day, and he is not shy about where his new aliens come from. Short version: he mined real UFO accounts, and one infamous schoolyard sighting in Zimbabwe got under his skin in a big way.
Why these aliens look the way they do
Talking with Rachel Abrams on The Daily, Spielberg said he wanted the film ’s creatures to feel like something people actually report, not just another cool design from the effects shop.
"I had to base our aliens on what people have reported who claim to have had close encounters of the third kind. And there is a consistency in the reporting."
So instead of inventing a totally new species, he dug through decades of testimonies from around the world, looking for patterns he could use as a foundation. It is a very Spielberg move: chase the familiar feeling, then make it uncanny. And yes, he knows exactly what he is doing when he says 'close encounters'.
The Zimbabwe case he could not shake
One report that clearly influenced the look is the Ariel School incident in Zimbabwe. Spielberg called out the late Dr. John Mack — the Harvard psychiatrist who went to the school to interview witnesses — and zeroed in on how the kids described what they saw.
"He went to Zimbabwe to the Ariel school where 65 school children saw a craft land and saw beings come out of that craft and they all described the eyes that were completely hypnotic and the eyes were wraparound eyes."
Those 'wraparound' eyes — hypnotic, unsettling — fed straight into how he shaped the beings in Disclosure Day. If you have seen E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or War of the Worlds, you know Spielberg has a knack for making extraterrestrial moments feel personal and plausible. This time, he anchored that feeling in some of the most widely discussed testimony on record.
Does the approach work? Audiences seem in
Despite mixed reviews, Disclosure Day launched strong and quickly took the top spot worldwide. In North America, it opened to about $44 million — easily number one for the weekend and one of Spielberg’s best debuts for an original project in recent years. Studio expectations were met, and then some, without any four-quadrant IP crutch propping it up.
Bottom line: blending testimony with craft is giving Disclosure Day an eerie edge, and moviegoers are showing up for it.