‘Disclosure Day’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ Connections That Have Fans Convinced Spielberg Is Pulling Off a Stealth Sequel

Nearly five decades after a small-town Indiana man followed a vision to Devils Tower, Steven Spielberg is returning to the territory that made him a legend. His upcoming sci-fi event film, ‘Disclosure Day‘, has been generating enormous anticipation since its first trailer dropped, but the conversation has moved well beyond simple excitement. Theories have run rampant about how ‘Disclosure Day’ may be a secret sequel to ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, especially with shots in previous trailers featuring a UFO that closely resembled the one seen in the 1977 film.

The speculation is no longer just fan noise. Cast members have confirmed a meaningful relationship between the two films, and Spielberg himself has been deliberately fueling the mystery with every public appearance. While very little is known about the full plot of ‘Disclosure Day’, it has been suggested by Emily Blunt and confirmed by Josh O’Connor that the new film answers some questions raised by ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’.

The Cast and Their Secretive Characters

Universal Pictures describes ‘Disclosure Day’ as a new original event film created and directed by Spielberg, starring SAG winner and Oscar nominee Emily Blunt, Emmy and Golden Globe winner Josh O’Connor, Oscar winner Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and two-time Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, with a screenplay by David Koepp, whose previous collaborations with Spielberg include ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘War of the Worlds’, and ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’.

Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild, a Kansas City TV meteorologist who gains extraordinary abilities and a psychic connection to O’Connor’s whistleblower character, Daniel Kellner. Josh O’Connor plays Daniel as a cybersecurity whistleblower actively fighting to release suppressed government evidence of alien contact.

Colman Domingo plays Hugo Wakefield, a character wholeheartedly in favor of disclosure and potentially a stand-in for the director himself. Spielberg, who came up with the story for the film, really wants to have a true close encounter one of these days, and Domingo told Empire that he feels Hugo is a surrogate for Steven.

The film marks the 30th collaboration between John Williams and Steven Spielberg.

The Visual Evidence That Sparked the Stealth Sequel Theory

While there are no direct references in the trailers, a great deal of the visuals and themes feel the same as ‘Close Encounters’: a mysterious alien force communicating with humanity in an unconventional way, glowing UFOs, and a shady government agency trying to cover everything up.

One trailer features references to Roswell, and in its closing moments, a flying saucer appears to emerge from the sky in what many believe is a direct nod to a similar scene in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’.

It is this moment that convinced many film fans that ‘Disclosure Day’ could very well be a sequel of sorts to Spielberg’s classic. The final trailer also offers a brief look at the faces of the aliens in ‘Disclosure Day’, and they bear a resemblance to the ones seen in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, which featured aliens with incredibly similar facial designs.

A new piece of photographic evidence shared by Entertainment Weekly shows a floating oval shape above a few police officers in a desert setting, and for eagle-eyed fans, that image was practically a confession.

What the Cast and Spielberg Have Actually Said

The most compelling confirmation has come directly from the people making the film. In an AP interview with Josh O’Connor, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ is referenced as a foundational influence on ‘Disclosure Day’, with the key point being that the new project is meant to revisit and expand on ideas introduced in that 1977 classic.

O’Connor confirms that ‘Disclosure Day’ answers some questions raised by ‘Close Encounters’, implying that Spielberg is returning to the same thematic territory with a more revealing angle.

In the final trailer, Spielberg himself says, “I’m much more inclined now than I was when I made ‘Close Encounters’ to really believe that we’re not the only intelligent civilization in the universe.” That quote alone signals that ‘Disclosure Day’ is, at minimum, the artistic completion of something Spielberg started nearly 50 years ago.

Screenwriter David Koepp shared with Empire that the film has a certain amount in common with certain conspiracy thrillers, describing it as feeling like ‘Three Days of the Condor’, explaining that conspiracies are fantastic for movies because they are like an onion, and you peel away layers and find out more and more.

Spielberg’s Deliberate Secrecy and the Hidden Third Act

Part of what has made the ‘Close Encounters’ conversation so persistent is Spielberg’s own theatrics around the marketing of the film. Spielberg has been very explicit that the marketing for ‘Disclosure Day’ is deliberately hiding a major portion of the film, stating at CinemaCon that no footage from the entire third act appears in any trailers or previews, because he wants audiences to experience the story’s final revelations without a single hint attached.

Spielberg explained his reasoning at CinemaCon, saying that audiences have photographic memories and that if they see one shot they will sit in their seats and ask to be shown exactly where that shot will appear. It is a remarkably old-school approach from a filmmaker who has always understood the power of the reveal.

Fans should not go into ‘Disclosure Day’ expecting a traditional sequel in the conventional sense, especially since the two films are distributed by different studios, but the film seems positioned firmly as a spiritual sequel to the 1977 classic.

Blunt teased that ‘Disclosure Day’ answers questions posed by ‘Close Encounters’, not with regard to specific narrative beats but overarching thematic concepts, and with decades of additional experience, Spielberg now has a fresh perspective on those ideas.

A Spiritual Sequel Decades in the Making

About half a century after his first contact with alien life in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, Spielberg hopes to recapture some of the old extraterrestrial magic with ‘Disclosure Day’. The wider scope of the new film, involving various characters from government officials all the way down to ordinary citizens profoundly affected by something unexplainable beyond this planet, really harkens back to his original feature foray into UFOs.

The film carries a budget of $115 million, was produced under Amblin Entertainment, and is distributed by Universal Pictures, with a running time of 145 minutes. Filming took place from February to May 2025 in New York, New Jersey, and Atlanta.

At CinemaCon, Spielberg referenced a New York Times article from 2017 about anomalous phenomena and stated there is nothing more important than original stories, warning that if Hollywood keeps operating on existing properties it will run out of gas. He also noted that the subject matter of ‘Disclosure Day’ is not shrouded to everyone in the film and that some characters have known the truth for over 80 years.

Whatever the exact nature of the connection turns out to be when ‘Disclosure Day’ opens in theaters, one thing is already clear: Spielberg has engineered one of the most genuinely exciting pre-release mysteries in years, and audiences are about to find out whether his biggest secret was worth the wait. If you are someone who has been quietly rewatching ‘Close Encounters’ to prepare, what specific detail from that 1977 film do you think ‘Disclosure Day’ is finally going to answer?