Warning: Spoilers ahead for Disclosure Day.Disclosure Day‘s final scenes introduce a major character.
Steven Spielberg has returned to sci-fi with his latest movie, Disclosure Day, where a meteorologist and a cybersecurity expert are on the run as they expose the government and their cover-up of extraterrestrial encounters. It stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, and Colin Firth, and has been praised for being Spielberg’s “most profound work,” especially for the final moments of the movie where a vital character is introduced.
Reel 1 of 1 · 35mm How Well Do You Know Steven Spielberg? “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
🦈JawsSmile, you son of a…
🌕E.T.Phone home
🪒Indiana JonesBelongs in a museum
🦖Jurassic ParkHold on to your butts
🫖Saving RyanEarn this
01
Jaws (1975) invented the summer blockbuster — partly because the three pneumatic sharks built for the shoot kept malfunctioning in Martha’s Vineyard’s salt water, forcing Spielberg to keep the creature offscreen. What nickname did the crew give the mechanical shark?
✓ Correct! Bruce — named after Spielberg’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer. Three 25-foot hydraulic sharks were built for about $250,000 each, and they kept sinking, shorting, and rusting. The forced minimalism (Williams’ dun-dun cue, a bobbing barrel, a ripple on the water) is now credited with making Jaws scarier than any visible shark could have. Pixar later named the shark in Finding Nemo “Bruce” as a tribute.
✗ Cut! The answer is Bruce — after Spielberg’s lawyer Bruce Ramer. “The Orca” was Quint’s boat. “Moby” and “Chompers” are red herrings. The three real hydraulic sharks kept breaking down so badly that Spielberg hid the shark for most of the film, which paradoxically became the masterstroke that invented modern suspense cinema.
02
In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Elliot lures the stranded alien out of the forest with a trail of candy. In one of film history’s most famous product-placement coups, Mars Inc. turned down the M&M’s offer, so Hershey’s swooped in — and sales of which sweet jumped around 65% overnight?
✓ Correct! Reese’s Pieces. Hershey’s paid roughly $1 million in promotional tie-ins (no upfront placement fee, but they agreed to run an E.T. marketing campaign) and watched sales explode as the film ran through summer 1982. It remains the textbook case taught in business schools for how screen placement can remake a product overnight. E.T. became the highest-grossing film of all time until Spielberg’s own Jurassic Park dethroned it in 1993.
✗ Cut! The answer is Reese’s Pieces. Mars Inc. turned down the M&M’s offer, reportedly because executives thought the alien was too ugly to associate with the brand — a decision they must have regretted all summer. Hershey’s took the deal, did about $1M in tie-in marketing, and saw Reese’s Pieces sales jump around 65%. It’s still the gold-standard case study in product placement.
03
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) nearly starred a different leading man. He’d already screen-tested with Karen Allen and signed on, but CBS refused to release him from his TV contract, so Harrison Ford was cast roughly three weeks before shooting. Who was the original Indy?
✓ Correct! Tom Selleck — locked in by CBS for Magnum P.I., which the network refused to delay. To twist the knife, a writers’ strike then pushed Magnum’s start back anyway, meaning Selleck would have been free in time. Harrison Ford (already Han Solo for George Lucas) stepped in late, and the rest is cinema history. Selleck has joked about it on every late-night circuit for 40 years.
✗ Cut! The answer is Tom Selleck. He had the part and the test footage with Karen Allen still exists. CBS wouldn’t let him out of Magnum P.I. — a writers’ strike then delayed the TV show anyway, which is the great “what if” of his career. Lucas and Spielberg turned to Harrison Ford, already lined up for Empire Strikes Back, just three weeks before Raiders began principal photography.
04
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) climaxes at Devils Tower as scientists greet the alien mothership by exchanging a five-note musical phrase — possibly the most famous handful of notes ever written for a film. The long-time Spielberg collaborator who composed it is…
✓ Correct! John Williams — Spielberg’s collaborator on nearly every film he’s made since The Sugarland Express in 1974. Williams reportedly tried hundreds of five-note combinations before Spielberg signed off on the Re-Mi-Do-Do-Sol sequence. Williams has five Oscars, 50-plus nominations, and his Spielberg credits include Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and more.
✗ Cut! The answer is John Williams — the only composer Spielberg has really used across his career. Jerry Goldsmith scored Alien and Poltergeist. Hans Zimmer is the Nolan guy. James Horner did Titanic and Avatar. Williams alone has scored nearly every Spielberg film since 1974 and personally wrote the five-note Close Encounters motif after trying hundreds of alternatives.
05
Jurassic Park (1993) was adapted from a 1990 novel whose author insisted on writing the first screenplay draft himself. Spielberg paid $1.5 million for the rights before the book was even published. Who wrote it?
✓ Correct! Michael Crichton — the Harvard-trained physician-turned-novelist who also wrote The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere, Disclosure and Rising Sun, and created ER. He sold Jurassic Park to Spielberg pre-publication. David Koepp rewrote Crichton’s draft into the film’s shooting script. The novel and film were such a phenomenon that Crichton wrote a sequel, The Lost World, explicitly because Spielberg asked for one.
✗ Cut! The answer is Michael Crichton. He wrote the novel in 1990, Spielberg bought the rights pre-publication for $1.5M, and Crichton did the first screenplay draft before David Koepp took it over. Crichton also created ER and wrote Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere, Disclosure and more. Stephen King, Clancy and Grisham are all bestsellers of the same era, but Jurassic Park is pure Crichton.
06
After a decade of being nominated and shut out by the Academy, Spielberg finally won his first Best Director Oscar in March 1994. The film — shot in Poland, mostly in black and white — also won Best Picture. Which one was it?
✓ Correct! Schindler’s List — which swept the 1994 Oscars with seven wins, including Best Picture and Spielberg’s first Best Director statue. He famously shot it in 72 days for about $22 million in parallel with prepping Jurassic Park, and took no salary. He’d later win a second Best Director for Saving Private Ryan (1998). The Color Purple went 0-for-11 at the Oscars in 1986 — one of the most notorious snubs ever.
✗ Cut! The answer is Schindler’s List. The Color Purple (1985) got 11 nominations and won zero. Empire of the Sun (1987) went home empty too. Amistad (1997) was respected but not a Best Director winner. Schindler’s List won seven Oscars in 1994 — Best Picture, Best Director and more — finally breaking Spielberg’s decade-long Academy drought.
07
Saving Private Ryan (1998) opens with a harrowing, nearly 24-minute combat sequence that veterans described as the most realistic war footage ever put on film. Which June 6, 1944 landing does it recreate?
✓ Correct! Omaha Beach — the bloodiest of the five D-Day sectors, where US forces took catastrophic casualties in the opening hours. Spielberg filmed the sequence on Curracloe Strand in Ireland with around 1,000 extras, desaturated the film stock, and removed the protective shutters from cameras to capture that signature jittery, hand-held look. The Ryan opening is routinely voted one of the greatest battle scenes in film history.
✗ Cut! The answer is Omaha Beach. Iwo Jima and Okinawa were Pacific, 1945. Sword Beach was the British D-Day sector. Omaha was the bloodiest of the Normandy landings, and it’s where Spielberg’s shaky-cam, desaturated, shutter-stripped sequence is set — shot on Curracloe Strand in Ireland with about 1,000 extras, many of them Irish Defence Forces reservists.
08
In 2022 Spielberg finally told his own origin story — a young Jewish boy named Sammy who falls in love with filmmaking, watches his parents’ marriage fracture, and learns that a camera can both reveal and lie. Michelle Williams got an Oscar nom for playing the mother. What’s the film called?
✓ Correct! The Fabelmans — co-written with his Lincoln and Munich collaborator Tony Kushner. Paul Dano plays the father (based on Spielberg’s engineer dad Arnold), Michelle Williams plays the mother (based on his artist mum Leah) and earned a Best Actress Oscar nom, Gabriel LaBelle plays young Sammy/Steven, and David Lynch cameos as John Ford in the film’s stunning final scene. Seven Oscar nominations in total, including Picture and Director.
✗ Cut! The answer is The Fabelmans. “Amblin” is the name of his 1968 short and his production company, not this film. The Fabelmans (2022), co-written with Tony Kushner, dramatises Spielberg’s New Jersey-to-Arizona-to-California childhood with the family name lightly fictionalised. It earned seven Oscar nominations including Picture, Director and a Best Actress nod for Michelle Williams.
End of Reel · House Lights Up Your Director’s Cut
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Amblin auteur — or still shooting the first act?
In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley, writer David Koepp, who is known for Spider-Man, Jurassic Park, and War of the Worlds, spoke about his latest title, Disclosure Day, whichhe co-wrote with Spielberg. One of the main topics was regarding the final moments of the movie when Daniel Kellner (played by O’Connor) and Margaret Fairchild (played by Blunt) expose the government’s alien database, including shocking videos which were shown live on air as an NBC anchor (played by Courtney Grace) reacts to the ongoing transmission.
Koepp reveals the thought process behind the decision to introduce a new character during such a vital part of the entire movie, and how they went through the process of selecting the perfect actress for the role:
Well, first off, Steven is after humanity in every single character. If a guy walks through the background with a loaf of bread, Steven wants to know what his day is like, and is he sad? Is he happy? And obviously, he has a great deal of humanity, and he insists on it in his films. The idea that a new character would come in two hours into the movie. We’ve never seen this woman before, and she will carry us through the last seven, eight minutes of the film.
The idea there was, first of all, it’s really ballsy because that could easily not work. And if the actor is not fantastic, you got a real problem. Fortunately, Courtney Grace, who plays the anchor who does that, is a wonderful actress, but also that character’s an audience surrogate. We didn’t want somebody who knew all this to tell us. They are helping us with our reactions if they’re having them at the same time.
And there’s a moment, I know that I cry a lot in that climax too, and particularly in the moment when she’s talking, she’s trying to deliver the news, and she’s choking up, and she says, “I am so sorry.” And it’s just so moving, and it’s keeping pace with our own feelings and reactions. I feel like that idea paid off really wonderfully. It could have gone bad, but it did not.
Grace was praised a lot on social media for her significant role during such an emotional ending of Disclosure Day. Users on X stated: “Amazing performance from that news anchor at the end of Disclosure Day. Kind of sells the whole film,” as well as also sharing Koepp’s sentiment by adding “the tears I shed.” Her role only has the credited name of NBC anchor, and yet she managed to capture everyone watching this movie and deliver a performance that will be remembered.
Disclosure Day is receiving high praise and has an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 80%, with critics praising “the talented Blunt,” as well as being the “most entertaining film of the year.” However, it only received a B on CinemaScore which is his lowest score in 18 years. Some are also seeing that the movie is gearing up to be the best box office debut in 18 years for the filmmaker.
Spielberg is mainly known for his sci-fi adventures, and it is a genre he is often referred to as the master of. E.T. was the highest-grossing movie of all time before another Spielberg movie, Jurassic Park, took the top spot. The filmmaker has a few projects he is reportedly tackling next, including his first Western movie, which he spoke about at SXSW, stating it already “kicks ass.”
Disclosure Day is available to watch in theaters now.
