Steven Spielberg Doesn’t Want His New Movie Spoiled by Trailers

I’m always impressed when I think I’ve seen most of what a movie has to offer from its trailer, only to be surprised when I sit down in the theater. Crafting an enticing trailer is its own art form, and being able to dole out enough information to entice people without saying too much is really hard, and a lot of trailers are bad at it. I recently watched Captain America: Brave New World for the first time, and it’s insane how much of that film’s climax (which it treats like a surprise) was in the marketing.

There are also movies like Weapons that use their marketing to hone in on specific moments, like children running creepily into the night toward an unknown location. While the answer to where they wind up is not as important to that movie as why they end up there, the mystery surrounding it made for a good pitch and got people in to see a movie that may have been too weird to market in a traditional sense. You know who loved Weapons? Steven Spielberg. And while the marketing for his new film Disclosure Day isn’t as stark as it was for Weapons, he might be taking some inspiration.

According to Discussing Film, the long-time director wanted to make sure that larger elements of his new movie, which is about humanity being given evidence that aliens exist, didn’t wind up in the trailers. To ensure that, he’s made sure that the entirety of the third act will not appear in any promotional material. However, attendees were also given a glimpse of a new alien lifeform when shown a sizzle reel at CinemaCon, so there still may yet be more that is disclosed before the film arrives.

Spielberg also talked with Colman Domingo (who will appear in the film) about his obsession with UFOs/UAPs and how that was reignited after an incident in 2017 where a Navy pilot claimed to see something he couldn’t explain. And, as Spielberg said, “I’ve been curious ever since I was a little kid about what’s happening in the night sky, what’s happening in the sky during the daytime,” so this is clearly a bit of a passion project for him, which is what you want from one of the greatest living filmmakers.

The man behind Jurassic Park also promised that this would not be his last movie. “I haven’t done a Western yet — that’s next,” Spielberg told the crowd, and boy oh boy would I watch that in a heartbeat. Spielberg has been on his A Game for his last few films (The Fabelmans is a masterpiece), and if Disclosure Day comes even close to what he’s been churning out, then we could very well have another classic on our hands.