A new Disclosure Day clip highlights its alien visitation theme – and has interesting parallels with a TV show Spielberg produced in 2002… NB: The following contains speculation about Disclosure Day – all based on what is presented in the trailers released so far. Ever since it was announced, there has been some speculation that ... Disclosure Day and its connections to an obscure 2002 Spielberg series
A new Disclosure Day clip highlights its alien visitation theme – and has interesting parallels with a TV show Spielberg produced in 2002…
NB: The following contains speculation about Disclosure Day – all based on what is presented in the trailers released so far.
Ever since it was announced, there has been some speculation that Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming sci-fi thriller, Disclosure Day, might be some sort of stealth sequel to his 1977 classic, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. While we can’t say for sure whether that’s true or not, the director’s new summer film does appear to have several connections to a less well-known Spielberg project – a Sci-Fi Channel mini-series from 2002.
Produced by DreamWorks Television, Taken (not to be confused with the Liam Neeson film) was a highly ambitious project for its day. Airing over the course of 10 consecutive nights, its feature-length episodes weighed in at about 80 minutes each once you took away the adverts.
Read more: Disclosure Day | Dissecting the new trailer and its connections to UFO lore
Written by Leslie Bohem, the mini-series charted the mystery of UFOs and alien visitation from the beginning of the flying saucer age to what was then the present day. It took in a huge cast of characters as it moved forward in time, beginning with the Roswell incident in 1947 before following multiple families and their encounters with extra-terrestrials.
The series’ concept came from Steven Spielberg himself, who was credited as executive producer; episodes were directed by some respected filmmakers, including Texas Chain Saw legend Tobe Hooper (he shot the first episode) and Breck Eisner (who later made The Crazies remake). It also featured Dakota Fanning in one of her earliest roles; she’d later work with Spielberg again on War Of The Worlds. Given this was before the ‘golden age of television’, it’s quite impressive stuff.
We won’t try to recap all 877 minutes of this sprawling saga here. Instead, here’s the short version: aliens have been visiting our planet for decades, abducting humans and engaging in experiments. In 1947, an alien vessel collided with an experimental military spy balloon, causing it to crash in the New Mexico desert. The military retrieved the ship and its occupants, then set about covering up the evidence.
As we’ve seen from the trailers so far, Disclosure Day is similarly steeped in UFO lore. Like Taken, Disclosure Day’s events are connected to the Roswell incident – a promo released in March showed black-and-white ‘footage’ of a crashed saucer from 1947, while a clapper board had the word ‘Occupant’ written on it. Again, like Taken, the implication is that the military recovered both a ship and an alien all those years ago.
Unlike Taken, however, Disclosure Day appears to be told from the perspective of just two central characters. There’s Daniel, a cybersecurity bod turned whistleblower who’s discovered evidence of hushed-up alien visitations and plans to reveal it to the world (hence the film’s title).
Then we have Emily Blunt’s Margaret, a weather presenter; she’s the character we’ve seen in the earliest teasers, speaking in some exotic language on live TV. These two characters are then thrown together when a shadowy company, represented by Colin Firth’s scary-looking Noah Scanlon, starts hunting them down.
A more recent TV clip (see below) adds further detail to the story. Both Daniel and Margaret appear to have been abducted by extra-terrestrials when they were kids – we see what we believe are flashbacks to a boy and a girl in an alien-looking environment; a crown-like device descends towards the girl’s face, and a scrawny set of fingers settle on her cheek.
Those fingers look as though they belong to the ‘grey’ aliens long discussed in ufology circles – the very sort seen in Taken.
Here’s a screengrab of the series’ visitors – note that the fingers are similarly long, thin and colourless:
There’s a more specific parallel between Disclosure Day and Taken, though. In Disclosure Day’s trailers, there are repeated glimpses of deer and birds – clearly a motif that runs through the film. More specifically, there are shots of a deer appearing in the little girl’s bedroom, and then another shot – probably part of the same flashback – where we see the girl walking toward an enchanted-looking house with the deer in tow.
Our suspicion is that the aliens are capable of taking on different forms, including animals, and have appeared to the girl as a deer, luring her out of her room and into their spacecraft.
Why do we think this? Because almost the exact same thing happens in Taken.
A boy is woken up at night by a cartoon-like blue squirrel at his window. He follows the squirrel out into the countryside and towards a tree, which turns out to be the critter’s home. Except, of course, it’s a spacecraft in disguise.
You can see this truly bizarre moment here:
In Taken, we had a blue squirrel; Disclosure Day contrasts this with a bright red cardinal bird.
Here’s another parallel between Disclosure Day and that earlier show: an alien artefact. In Taken, there was a small, dagger-like object which became the series’ Macguffin. There appears to be some sort of other-worldly device in Disclosure Day that allows its user to remotely control other people; we see Colin Firth’s character use it in one scene, and Emily Blunt holds something that looks remarkably similar elsewhere:
Shape-shifting is clearly a plot point in Disclosure Day, since we see an actor’s face morph into Emily Blunt’s in one shot; in Taken, aliens were similarly capable of disguising themselves as humans, often for the purposes of flirting and bedroom gymnastics.
Now, we’re not suggesting that Disclosure Day is some sort of sequel to (or adaptation of) a somewhat obscure show from the early 2000s. But the similarities are certainly fascinating, and go deeper than the usual touchstones of flying saucer mythology.
Riffing on Roswell isn’t unexpected for a film about extra-terrestrial visitors (Independence Day did it); nor are the presence of crop circles, as seen in the comparison shots below. Grey aliens disguising themselves as furry mammals to abduct kids does seem like a strange coincidence, though.
Spielberg has, of course, been captivated by UFOs since he was a teenager. One of his earliest pieces of filmmaking, Firelight (1964) was first explored the phenomenon. When the success of Jaws gave him the creative freedom he needed, Spielberg risked his career with the hugely expensive Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. He had aliens visit again in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and War Of The Worlds. Roswell even popped up in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.
Disclosure Day is beginning to look like a fast-paced summary of a life-long fascination – one that ropes in bits of Close Encounters, Firelight – and even elements from a lesser-known show which aired over 20 years ago.
Disclosure Day is in cinemas from the 12th June 2026.
