Steven Spielberg’s filmography has made him one of our greatest living filmmakers, with so many classics under his belt that it boggles the mind. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Jurassic Park, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Schindler’s List only scratch the surface of his influence on pop culture, and this week sees him not only finally return to the big screen but break an eight-year gap without a new science fiction movie. Disclosure Day, a new sci-fi thriller, sees Spielberg return to a well-trodden area that he’s explored multiple times already: the hunt for the truth about UFOs and aliens. It’s so thoroughly explored by Spielberg that the film spawned a major fan theory.
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Ever since it was confirmed that Steven Spielberg was working on a new UFO movie, fans had an inkling, a wonder, even, if the new film would actually be a sequel to one of his other films. After the trailers debuted and brief glimpses of the UFOs from the movie and even the aliens that would appear were finally revealed, this fan theory began to spread like wildfire, with many convinced that Disclosure Day was going to be a secret sequel to Spielberg’s 1977 classic film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now that the new film from the Oscar-winner is here, we have an answer, and the short version is, no. Also, spoilers follow.
Close Encounters & Disclosure Day Fan Theory Debunked
Despite both being about aliens, UFOs, and the search for the truth, no, there is no connection between Disclosure Day and Close Encounters of the Third Kind beyond both being science fiction films directed by Steven Spielberg. It’s easy to see why fans thought this could be the case, though, given the subject matter, but the truth is, nope, these are two totally isolated alien movies from the same director.
Though there’s no formal connection, it’s worth noting that both Disclosure Day and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are not carbon copies of each other in any way. Both films not only tell distinct stories that aren’t that similar, but seem to work in conversation with each other by exploring distinct emotional beats that the other isn’t all that interested in.
Furthermore, despite both having global implications in their narrative, there’s a distinct inverse to their endings, with Close Encounters of the Third Kind having an optimistic feeling about meeting alien life and Disclosure Day delivering a harrowing one about how a lack of empathy has made us lesser beings. All of that in mind, the two movies may not be technically part of the same continuity, but they make a great double-feature.
For just one second, let’s consider the idea that the theory WAS real, and Disclosure Day was a secret sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As precious as Steven Spielberg’s movies are to the film-going public, only a few are so sacrosanct that they’ll never get a sequel or reboot (like E.T.). That is to say, if a sequel to one of Steven Spielberg’s movies was being made decades later, you could bet the house on the fact that this would absolutely be the foundation of the marketing plan to promote the movie. Beyond the fact that this didn’t happen, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was made by Columbia Pictures, while Disclosure Day is a Universal Pictures release, meaning sequel rights would sit with Sony.
It’s worth noting that Spielberg did consider a follow-up to Close Encounters after it was released, but decided against it. The project was at one point called Watch the Skies and later Night Skies, with Spielberg deciding to develop a potential follow-up so that there wouldn’t be a sequel made without him (like Universal had done previously with Jaws). After the filmmaker decided to scrap the project altogether, elements of what he’d come up with lingered, later influencing other Spielberg projects like Poltergeist, Gremlins, and most famously, E.T.
