The Timeline
Every major UFO and UAP event below has a documented connection to Disclosure Day -- whether as direct inspiration, a referenced event, or part of the cultural wave that made this film inevitable. The relevance bars indicate how closely each event ties to the movie.
Real UFO/UAP Event
Key Disclosure Moment
Disclosure Day Milestone
July 1947
Roswell, New Mexico
A mysterious object crashed on a ranch near Roswell. The military initially announced recovery of a "flying disc" before retracting to "weather balloon." Decades of investigation, whistleblowers, and declassified documents have kept Roswell at the center of UFO lore.
Film Connection: Directly referenced in the film. IMDb casting calls listed "Roswell, NM" roles. The Super Bowl trailer confirmed a Roswell scene with period-accurate military vehicles and desert crash footage.
Relevance
July 1952
Washington D.C. UFO Incident
Over two consecutive weekends, unidentified objects appeared on radar at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base. Fighter jets were scrambled. The objects were seen by multiple credible witnesses and tracked on radar -- directly over the U.S. Capitol.
Film Connection: The film's theme of government awareness and cover-up echoes the D.C. incident, where the Air Force held the largest press conference since WWII to explain away the sightings. Spielberg has cited the 1952 sightings in past interviews about UFO fascination.
Relevance
April 1966
Westall UFO Encounter, Australia
Over 200 students and teachers at Westall High School in Melbourne witnessed a silvery disc-shaped craft descend into a nearby field, then ascend and vanish at incredible speed. Military personnel arrived quickly and allegedly instructed witnesses to remain silent.
Film Connection: The Westall incident's mass-witness nature mirrors Disclosure Day's central premise: what happens when hundreds of people see the same thing at once and the government cannot contain the story.
Relevance
November 1977
Close Encounters of the Third Kind Released
Spielberg's landmark sci-fi film depicted ordinary people drawn to a site of alien contact. The film transformed how popular culture viewed extraterrestrial life -- from horror to wonder. Its musical communication theme became iconic.
Film Connection: Disclosure Day is widely regarded as a spiritual successor. The Super Bowl trailer's mothership design deliberately echoes Close Encounters. Emily Blunt's involuntary alien communication parallels the compulsion experienced by Roy Neary.
Relevance
December 1980
Rendlesham Forest Incident, UK
U.S. Air Force personnel stationed at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England reported seeing strange lights and a triangular craft in Rendlesham Forest over multiple nights. Deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt recorded observations in real time. Physical evidence included broken branches, radiation readings, and ground impressions.
Film Connection: Often called "Britain's Roswell," the incident involves military witnesses whose testimony was suppressed -- directly paralleling the whistleblower arc of Josh O'Connor's character who insists "The truth belongs to 7 billion people."
Relevance
March 1997
Phoenix Lights, Arizona
Thousands of people across a 300-mile corridor in Arizona, Nevada, and the Mexican state of Sonora reported seeing a massive V-shaped formation of lights pass silently overhead. The event was recorded on multiple home video cameras. Then-Governor Fife Symington initially mocked the sightings before later admitting he had witnessed the craft himself.
Film Connection: The Phoenix Lights represent mass public sighting that authorities could not contain -- the exact scenario Disclosure Day explores. The film's live-broadcast disclosure is the modern equivalent of thousands simultaneously witnessing something the government cannot explain away.
Relevance
November 2004
USS Nimitz Encounter (Tic-Tac)
Navy fighter pilots from the USS Nimitz carrier group encountered a white, oblong object -- dubbed the "Tic-Tac" -- off the coast of San Diego. Commander David Fravor described the object as roughly 40 feet long with no wings, exhaust, or visible propulsion. It moved with acceleration beyond any known technology, dropping from 80,000 feet to sea level in seconds.
Film Connection: The Nimitz encounter is the single most credible modern UFO case and a cornerstone of the UAP disclosure movement that made Disclosure Day culturally relevant. The film's premise exists in a world where these encounters are real and documented.
Relevance
2014 - 2015
USS Theodore Roosevelt Encounters (Gimbal, GoFast)
Navy pilots operating off the East Coast reported near-daily encounters with unidentified aerial objects over a period of months. These encounters produced the now-famous "Gimbal" and "GoFast" videos, showing objects performing maneuvers that defied known aerodynamics. Lt. Ryan Graves described objects that could remain stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds.
Film Connection: These encounters produced the leaked infrared footage that brought UAP into mainstream consciousness. Without these videos, the cultural appetite for a film like Disclosure Day may never have existed. The film's tagline "People deserve to know" echoes the pilots' frustration that their reports were ignored.
Relevance
December 2017
NY Times Reveals AATIP Program
The New York Times published a groundbreaking article revealing the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a secret Pentagon program that investigated UFO reports from 2007 to 2012. The article also released the Nimitz "Tic-Tac" video to the public for the first time. Former program head Luis Elizondo became a public advocate for transparency.
Film Connection: This is the real-world moment of "disclosure" that gives the film its name. A secret government program studying UFOs, revealed through journalism, is the exact narrative structure Disclosure Day explores -- the tension between secrecy and the public's right to know.
Relevance
April 2020
Pentagon Officially Releases UAP Videos
The U.S. Department of Defense officially released three previously leaked videos of unidentified aerial phenomena, confirming their authenticity. The videos -- known as "FLIR1" (Nimitz), "Gimbal," and "GoFast" -- showed objects performing flight characteristics beyond any known human technology. The Pentagon stated the release was to "clear up any misconceptions."
Film Connection: The U.S. government officially acknowledging unidentified objects in restricted airspace is the real-world precedent for Disclosure Day's fictional scenario. The film asks: what if the government went further than releasing videos -- what if it confirmed non-human intelligence?
Relevance
July 2023
David Grusch Congressional Testimony
Former intelligence officer David Grusch testified before the U.S. House Oversight Committee that the U.S. government possesses "intact and partially intact" non-human craft and has been running a decades-long reverse-engineering program. Navy pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor also testified. The hearing was watched by millions worldwide.
Film Connection: Grusch is the real-life version of Josh O'Connor's whistleblower character. His testimony -- a government insider risking his career to reveal the truth -- is Disclosure Day's plot made real. Spielberg began developing the film during this wave of congressional hearings.
Relevance
2024
Disclosure Day Production Announced
Steven Spielberg's untitled UFO film entered production with Universal Pictures, assembling an all-star cast led by Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, and Colman Domingo. Filming took place across multiple locations. The project was kept under tight secrecy, with the title unrevealed for months.
Film Connection: Spielberg returned to the UFO genre for the first time since 2005's War of the Worlds -- and his first hopeful alien film since 1982's E.T. The timing aligned directly with the post-Grusch disclosure wave, making the film feel culturally urgent.
Relevance
December 2025
Teaser Trailer Released
The title Disclosure Day was officially revealed alongside a teaser trailer. The footage showed Emily Blunt's meteorologist character being overtaken by an alien presence during a live broadcast, speaking in an unknown clicking language. The trailer went viral, generating massive speculation about its connection to real UAP events.
Film Connection: The title "Disclosure Day" itself references the real-world UAP disclosure movement. The teaser's focus on involuntary, public contact -- rather than government-controlled revelation -- subverts the real-world disclosure narrative in a distinctly Spielbergian way.
Relevance
February 9, 2026
Super Bowl LX Trailer (Roswell Scene Confirmed)
The full trailer debuted during Super Bowl LX to an audience of 120+ million viewers. It revealed the aliens for the first time -- warships hovering over cities, crop circles, and a mothership echoing Close Encounters. Critically, it confirmed a Roswell, New Mexico sequence with period military vehicles, connecting the film's fiction directly to 1947 history.
Film Connection: The Roswell confirmation closes the loop. Disclosure Day explicitly ties its fictional narrative to the single most famous real UFO event. The trailer's closing line -- "People deserve to know" -- positions the film as the cultural counterpart to the real-world disclosure movement.
Relevance
June 12, 2026
DISCLOSURE DAY Releases
Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day arrives in theaters and IMAX worldwide. After 79 years of real-world UFO sightings, government secrecy, whistleblower testimony, and a global cultural shift toward transparency -- the film brings the question to its ultimate cinematic conclusion: what happens when the truth finally comes out?
The Culmination: Every event on this timeline -- from Roswell to Grusch, from Close Encounters to the Pentagon's official UAP acknowledgment -- converges in this film. Disclosure Day is not just a movie. It is the cinematic expression of a 79-year question humanity has been asking.
Relevance
The Pattern of Disclosure
Looking at this timeline, a clear pattern emerges. For decades, UFO events followed a consistent cycle: sighting, military interest, public denial, slow leak of information. But starting in 2017, that cycle accelerated dramatically. The AATIP revelation, Pentagon video releases, and congressional hearings created a new dynamic -- one where suppression became increasingly difficult.
Disclosure Day captures this exact inflection point. The film's inciting incident -- alien communication happening on live television, beyond anyone's control -- represents the logical endpoint of the real disclosure timeline. If real-world disclosure has been a slow drip, Spielberg imagines the flood.
Why This Matters Now
Spielberg has said the question at the heart of Disclosure Day is: "If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?" That question has never been more relevant. Congressional hearings continue. New UAP legislation is being drafted. Military pilots are coming forward in record numbers. The real world is inching toward its own disclosure day -- and Spielberg is asking us to imagine what happens when we get there.