What Does Spielberg Really Know?
Hollywood P.O.V. By Dan Harary
March 2025
Those of us who remain enthralled every single time we watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind (i.e. ME – I’ve seen it at least 60 times), be on alert! There’s interesting news afoot about Steven Spielberg’s next film, called Disclosure. (I know my buddy Steve Bassett is thrilled by that title…) Shooting began in New Jersey in late February, with the cast of Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo and Wyatt Russell. The movie, written by David Koepp, features a UFO storyline and is slated to debut in May 2026.
I pose this question: What does Steven Spielberg really know about the UAP/UFO and ET Phenomenon? No other non-documentary filmmaker in the world has presented us with more fascinating films and TV shows -- that appear to be based on factual source material -- about UAPs/UFOs and Aliens than Steven. Here’s the quick list:
** Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Spielberg based his French Character of Dr. Claude Lacombe on iconic UFO investigator Jacques Vallee; and his UFO “Consultant” on the movie was none other than Project Blue Book’s Science Officer, Dr. J. Allen Hynek
** ET- The Extraterrestrial: Like the aliens in Close Encounters, little E.T. initially scares the people he comes into contact with, only to win them over with his gentle and wondrous nature. Spielberg once said he conceived the look of E.T. based on his mom, Leah Adler, who stood well under five feet high, and who I knew in real life! Spielberg has also relayed the story that when he showed ET at the White House during President Reagan’s term, Reagan stood up at the end of the film and said, “There are maybe six people in this room, right now, who know what we just saw up on that screen is real!” Spielberg says the President was completely serious at the time.
** Steven Spielberg Presents Taken: The time frame for this show was from 1944 to 2002 and followed the lives of three families: the Crawfords, who seek to cover up the Roswell crash and the existence of aliens; the Keyses, who are subject to frequent experimentation by the aliens; and the Clarkes, who sheltered one of the surviving aliens from the crash. Was Steven given more inside information about what really happened at Roswell than the rest of us?
** The Amazing Stories episode entitled Fine Tuning presented three high-school kids who build an antenna that can catch signals from outer space. The kids learn that Aliens are big fans of 1950s American television and have long been coming to the USA to meet some of their favorite Hollywood stars! Could Steven Spielberg himself be one of the Aliens’ heroes?
** War of the Worlds tapped into Spielberg’s anxieties and concerns in the wake of 9/11. As with H.G. Wells; source material, the aliens in this film are terrifying forces bent on claiming Earth as their own. But even in his most apocalyptic work, Spielberg the storyteller can’t help but marvel at the wonders capable of emerging from the sky.
** Encounters was a 2023 Netflix docuseries produced by Spielberg that explored real alien encounter stories. The series featured interviews with eyewitnesses, expert analysis, and presented new evidence.
Steven Spielberg recently told Stephen Colbert, “I’ve never seen a UFO, but I wish I had! I’ve never seen anything I can’t explain. But I believe that certain people, who have seen things that they can’t explain, are credible. I think what has been coming up recently is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And I think the secrecy that is shrouding all of these sightings and the lack of transparency… I think there is something going on that just needs extraordinary due diligence. I don’t believe we’re alone in the universe. I think it’s mathematically impossible that we are the only intelligent species in the cosmos. At the same time, it also seems impossible that someone would visit us from 400 million lightyears from here — except in the movies, of course — unless it figures out some way of jumping the shark, so to speak, and getting here through wormholes.”
He adds, “I first became aware of the sky when my father pointed out the Perseid meteor shower to me when I was about 6 years old, living in Haddon Heights, N.J. My father really held the key to the universe, which unlocked my imagination. I didn’t know what was happening. My dad had a thermos of coffee and had brought blankets, and we drove for about half an hour. We finally pulled over to the side of the road, and there were a few hundred people lying on their backs in the middle of the night, looking up at the sky. My dad found a place, spread the blanket out, and we both lay down. He pointed to the sky, and there was a magnificent meteor shower. All these incredible points of light were crisscrossing the sky. It was a phenomenal display, apparently announced in advance by the weather bureau. I was tremendously attracted to the source (behind those meteors)…what was causing this?”
High praise from this writer for Steven Spielberg’s lifetime fascination with the sky! Regardless of whatever Spielberg really does – or doesn’t – know about the actual existence of the Extraterrestrial Presence long visiting Earth, he certainly remains Hollywood’s most prominent advocate for presenting different POV’s about this phenomenon. Let’s hope that long before his next film, Disclosure, hits movie screens in May 2026, REAL LIFE DISCLOSURE by a major world figure has preceded the film’s debut by at least many, many months!
Dan Harary is the Chairman of The Hollywood Disclosure Alliance
and Author of the Sci-Fi Novel AFTER THEY CAME
To Contact Dan Harary: