Disclosure Day Could Be Steven Spielberg's Biggest Box Office Hit In Nearly A Decade

We're only several weeks into the summer movie season, but it's already been a surprising ride. "Backrooms" is a monumentally massive success. "The Mandalorian and Grogu" is a bit of a disappointment for "Star Wars." What comes next? Steven Spielberg, the highest-grossing movie director in box office history, makes his return to a theater near you with "Disclosure Day," and it looks like this could be the filmmaker's biggest movie in nearly a decade.

As of this writing, Universal Pictures' "Disclosure Day" is looking at an opening in the $45 to $59 million range domestically when it arrives next weekend, per Box Office Theory. It's likely to open higher than 2018's "Ready Player One" ($41.7 million opening/$583.4 million worldwide). Whether or not it can match that movie's final total will depend entirely on legs and international turnout. However, in the early going, it looks like Spielberg's return to sci-fi is going to be a big winner.

Critics have largely been saying the same thing about Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" – mainly that it's great. It's even been called his "best film in 20 years." That would roughly date back to 2005's "War of the Worlds," aka the last time Spielberg made a blockbuster about aliens. For what it's worth, that worked out quite well, taking in more than $600 million worldwide. It's a genre that's worked very well for him in the past.

Sci-fi is also a genre that plays very well internationally, which means Universal won't be relying on a domestic-heavy turnout to justify the movie's reported $115 million production budget. It also doesn't hurt that "Project Hail Mary" is one of the biggest Hollywood movies of 2026, having earned $678 million to date. Audiences have an appetite for non-franchise sci-fi right now, it seems.

Universal and Spielberg are being a little cagey on the specifics of the movie's plot, but the synopsis for "Disclosure Day" reads, "If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to eight billion people." The cast includes Emily Blunt ("Oppenheimer"), Josh O'Connor ("Wake Up Dead Man"), Colin Firth ("The King's Speech"), and Colman Domingo ("The Running Man").

Spielberg has spent much of the last decade making slightly more intimate, human stories, such as "The Post," "West Side Story," and "The Fabelmans." This represents a return to outright blockbusters for him. Spielberg's "Jaws" reshaped the box office forever when it became the first true summer blockbuster more than 50 years ago, so he's right at home in this arena. His "Jurassic Park" also changed movies forever and was, for a time, the highest-grossing movie ever, eventually making more than $1 billion.

To find a movie that opened bigger than this one is poised to for Spielberg, we have to go back to 2008 with "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which opened to $100 million en route to $790 million worldwide. ("Crystal Skull" was a monster hit no matter how much you hate it, but I digress.)

Competition might be an issue to some degree, with "Toy Story 5" just around the corner, though that's more family-friendly. "Jackass: Best and Last" and "Supergirl" round out June, but in the current theatrical marketplace, these are all movies that can coexist. Based on these early numbers, people are enthusiastic about Spielberg getting back into this arena.

"Disclosure Day" hits theaters on June 12, 2026.