Director Scott Cooper is making a thriller about the Roswell UFO legend

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere director Scott Cooper is moving to the UFO realm next, with a thriller about the Roswell incident in 1947. What will be Hollywood’s next go-to subject after it’s passed Peak Superhero? Initially, we thought it was videogame adaptations; now we’re starting to think it might be flying saucers. Having just ... Director Scott Cooper is making a thriller about the Roswell UFO legend

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere director Scott Cooper is moving to the UFO realm next, with a thriller about the Roswell incident in 1947.

What will be Hollywood’s next go-to subject after it’s passed Peak Superhero? Initially, we thought it was videogame adaptations; now we’re starting to think it might be flying saucers.

Having just made Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (there’s another favoured genre: the music biopic), director Scott Cooper is next said to be making a UFO movie. Specifically, a thriller about the Roswell incident in 1947, in which – if you believe the legend – a flying saucer crashed in the New Mexico desert, was recovered by the military, and was quickly covered up.

According to Deadline, Cooper will write and direct, and a deal has just been closed with 20th Century Studios. If it happens, it’ll emerge after Steven Spielberg’s alien-themed Disclosure Day, out this summer, and the hit documentary The Age Of Disclosure, which has been a hit on streaming.

Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow is working on a movie about Area 51 – that being the military base where the flying saucer recovered in 1947 is said to be hidden.

The Roswell incident is one of those conspiracy theories that has only grown over time. It all began with a newspaper headline, published in July 1947, which claimed that the US air force had captured a flying saucer on a Roswell ranch. The military quickly walked that back, stating that the debris on the site was a crashed weather balloon.

Nevertheless, the legend continued to grow, with more people coming forward and making increasingly bold claims. At first, it was debris of an alien craft that was recovered; then it was a complete aircraft, with occupants. Then came whispers that the military was reverse-engineering alien technology, and that it had a living alien hidden away somewhere.

Truth? Utter nonsense? We’ll leave you to decide. The age of the flying saucer has at least given us some terrific movies, though.