“I have a very strong suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now,” the filmmaker said during a keynote interview at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin on Friday, March 13
Credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Steven Spielberg confirmed that he believes in aliens in a recent interview
- The legendary filmmaker said he believes in life beyond Earth, though he’s never encountered a UFO
- Spielberg’s latest UFO film, Disclosure Day, hits theaters on June 12, 2026
Steven Spielberg is a believer in the extraterrestrial.
The Disclosure Day director, 79, gave his take on the existence of life beyond Earth during a keynote interview at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin on Friday, March 13.
“I don’t know any more than any of you do, but I have a very strong suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now,” Spielberg said. “I made a movie about that.”
Credit: Erika Goldring/Getty
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Spielberg isn’t alone in his thinking, as Barack Obama recently went viral for saying aliens exist. When he first heard this, the legendary filmmaker admitted his first thought was, “Oh my God, this is so great for Disclosure Day.”
After his comments fueled conspiracy theorists, the former president, 64, later clarified his statement on Instagram, saying, “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”
“He stepped back to say what he believed was life in the cosmos, which, of course, everybody should believe in,” Spielberg added. “No one should really think that we are the only intelligent civilization in the entire universe.”
“The big question is, are we alone now? And have we been alone over the last 80 years? Have we been alone over the last few thousand years?” he added.
The Oscar-winning director, whose filmography consists of several alien movies (E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and War of the Worlds), explained that he’s believed that “we were not alone” since he was a kid.
In a Disclosure Day behind-the-scenes video shared by Universal Pictures earlier this year, Spielberg said he’s “always been fascinated with things that cannot be explained.”
"When I was just a little kid, I remember developing a real curiosity about the sky at night and what's happening up there, and also not the possibility but the guarantee that there is life off this planet," he said.
During his keynote interview, Spielberg noted that he isn’t afraid of aliens and hopes for a sign of their existence.
“I made a movie called Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” he said. “I haven’t even had a close encounter of the first or second kind! Why haven’t I seen anything? Half of my friends have seen UFOs or UAPs. Where’s the justice of that, if you’re listening out there?”
Credit: Universal Pictures
Spielberg’s latest project, Disclosure Day, marks his first UFO film since Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The science fiction film is based on Spielberg’s original idea and written by David Koepp, who previously collaborated with the esteemed director on 1993's Jurassic Park, 2005's War of the Worlds and 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Colman Domingo star in the film.
"If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?" a logline for the film reads. "This summer, the truth belongs to 7 billion people. We are coming close to … Disclosure Day."
Disclosure Day is in theaters June 12, 2026.
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