The moment Universal released the December 2025 teaser — wide Kansas sky, a meteorologist tilting her head, one note of John Williams score — the internet settled on an idea of what Disclosure Day was going to be. Slow. Sparse. Grown-up Spielberg. The Close Encounters of 2026. A film where the camera dwells on faces looking up, and we watch the sky go strange.
That idea was half right. Per Empire's exclusive for the June 2026 issue, Spielberg has other plans for the first 30 minutes.
"This movie comes out of the gate very fast. People who are expecting another slow-burn first act — this is not that movie."— Steven Spielberg to Empire
What We Know About the Opening
Based on the CinemaCon footage, the Super Bowl trailer, and the Empire cover package, the opening stretch of Disclosure Day includes:
A cold open in medias res. The first image, per reporters who saw the CinemaCon reel, is not a Kansas cornfield. It's a door being kicked in.
Josh O'Connor's fugitive run. Daniel Kellner already has the disclosure file when we meet him. He is not discovering anything in act one. He is running with it. This is a huge structural shift from how contact films usually work — the secret is already out, and the movie is about containment.
A car-chase-onto-a-train sequence. Confirmed by IMDb trivia and hinted at by O'Connor himself ("a car chase that is going to melt people"). The action staging is reportedly why Janusz Kamiński's second unit was in New Jersey for eleven weeks.
The Kansas City weather broadcast. The "click" sequence with Emily Blunt — previously assumed to be the film's quiet centerpiece — is actually in the first act. It's the inciting event, not the climax.
Why Spielberg Pivoted
David Koepp's prior Spielberg collaborations — Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull — are all structured around the escalation of chase and threat. Koepp is not a meditative writer. He is a propulsion writer.
Spielberg telling Empire that the audience expectations have "caught up" to where the culture is means something specific: in 2026, the public already knows there are congressional UAP hearings happening. They already know Grusch testified. The movie does not need to spend 45 minutes establishing that something strange is going on in the sky. The audience is already there. So Spielberg is skipping that act and starting with the consequences.
The Close Encounters Comparison Breaks
If Close Encounters of the Third Kind spent half its runtime building to the Devils Tower meeting, Disclosure Day inverts it. The contact is the premise, not the ending. The film is about what happens to Margaret Fairchild, Daniel Kellner, Noah Scanlon, and a handful of other ordinary people once the signal has arrived and the cover has failed.
That is why Blunt's quote about "questions posed by Close Encounters" being "answered" works. Disclosure Day doesn't repeat the 1977 film's arc. It picks up where that film ended — and runs.
What It Means for the Box Office
Universal's tracking reportedly pushed for a more actioned-up back half of the marketing campaign after CinemaCon. Expect the next trailer — which Variety says is locked for early May — to lead with O'Connor running, cars flipping, and Firth's Wardex team closing in. The "look up at the sky" imagery isn't going away. It's just no longer the only mode. Disclosure Day is a summer action movie with a philosophical third act, not the other way around.
Sources
Empire — Disclosure Day Is An Action Movie That Comes Out Of The Gate Very Fast
Art Threat — Action-Packed Sci-Fi Thriller
Gizmodo — Mysterious Main Characters
Disclosure Day opens in theaters and IMAX on June 12, 2026.
Originally published at Disclosure Day Hub — the fan-built resource tracking Steven Spielberg's UFO film (June 12, 2026). Explore the full news hub, cast guide, and interview archive.
Top comments (0)