Steven Spielberg is reportedly making a new movie, and if the rumors are true, it’s going to rock the world of UFO enthusiasts — or at least get their hopes way up. Of course, a lot of that could simply be marketing hype mixed with existential wish-casting. But if there’s anyone who could stir that kind of anticipation, it’s Spielberg. After all, this is the man behind Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — films that didn’t just entertain people, but quietly rewired how an entire generation thinks about alien contact.
The recent UK Telegraph article describing the project leans heavily into a familiar narrative within UFO culture. One story that always resurfaces is the alleged White House screening of E.T. for Ronald Reagan. Supposedly, when the film ended, Reagan stood up and said — maybe joking, maybe not — that there were people in the room who knew that everything they had just watched was true. Whether that moment actually happened exactly as described almost doesn’t matter anymore. It’s become part of the mythology.
The new Spielberg film itself is still wrapped in secrecy, but one detail from the article jumped out at me — and I had completely forgotten this — a significant portion of it was filmed in New Jersey. That immediately brings to mind the so-called New Jersey drone sightings that dominated headlines just a year ago and then vanished entirely. Not even below the fold — just gone. But if you talk to people in New Jersey, you’ll hear that the drones never really stopped. They’re reportedly still seen regularly. They’ve just become so common that no one talks about them anymore. Like planes in the sky.
That’s part of what makes this Telegraph article so fun, and what makes this Spielberg project so intriguing. There’s even a rumor floating around — clearly conspiracy-theory territory — that a real alien might “star” in the movie. Obviously, that’s not happening. For one thing, it would probably violate every Screen Actors Guild rule imaginable, not to mention require the creation of an entirely new galactic union chapter. Unless, of course, the alien is playing itself. Or themselves. Or itself. The grammar alone would be a nightmare.
THE TELEGRAPH MOCKS:
Tinfoil hat wearers have reacted with characteristic calmness and sagacity to the news that Spielberg is returning to his sci-fi roots with his new production, filming of which was completed in the summer. It is said to have had several working titles, including The Dish and Non-View, but is now reported to be called Disclosure.
The new name, if it is correct, would provide “evidence” for the conspiracists that Spielberg knows more than he is letting on – “disclosure” being a key term for the alien truthers. They hold that the American authorities have secret information about UFOs and extraterrestrial life and want it to be publicly revealed, in a process they term “disclosure”.
Chris Ramsay, a Montreal-based magician who has a YouTube channel devoted to UFO theories, went viral with a tweet in which he most clearly set out the conspiracists’ thinking about Spielberg’s new film. Like any good conspiracy theorist, he described his thesis as something “that’s so crazy it just might be brilliant”.
Still, the idea is entertaining. And beneath the humor is a more interesting possibility: that Spielberg, over decades of filmmaking, may have become acquainted with enough people in enough rooms to suspect that something is going on. That maybe Reagan wasn’t joking. That maybe E.T. wasn’t just a children’s movie, but a soft disclosure story told in the safest way possible.
Regardless of what ultimately comes of this new film — whenever it’s released, and whatever it ends up being called — the anticipation is already enormous. The marketing machine seems primed, the speculation is growing, and expectations are high. We have little doubt the movie will be good. And even if it isn’t…
Well, it’ll still be out of this world.
(Sorry. I had to make at least one pun.)
