It’s crazy to think of a Steven Spielberg movie as a risk, but it’s been a minute since one of Hollywood’s all-time blockbuster filmmakers has had a monster box office hit. With his latest, “Disclosure Day,” the jury is still technically out, despite a $44.5 million opening weekend domestically and $93.9 million globally.
That’s because “Disclosure Day” is an original sci-fi premise the likes of which Spielberg hasn’t dabbled in since “E.T.” in the ’80s (we also nearly forgot that “Minority Report” and “A.I.” were based on other short stories).
But in terms of sheer dollars, this is Spielberg’s best opening since “Ready Player One” in 2018, which made $41.7 million domestic before legging out to over $600 million worldwide. It has already surpassed the worldwide grosses of Spielberg’s last release from Universal, his autobiographical film “The Fabelmans” ($47.7 million) and 20th Century’s “West Side Story” ($76.3 million), which still had some COVID after-effects impacting its box office.
Through that lens, this is a pretty solid result and shows that Spielberg as a hit-maker has still got it. It’s technically the largest opening for an original Spielberg film ever, even higher than the likes of “Saving Private Ryan,” “E.T.,” “The Fabelmans,” and “The Terminal.” At a time when young people are swarming to “Obsession” and “Backrooms” and are dismissing other action/sci-fi IP like “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” all that is something to celebrate.
“Disclosure Day” has a reported $115 million budget which, after marketing, means the film needs to reach somewhere in the vicinity of $300 million to become profitable. A good hold in the next few weeks should have “Disclosure Day” reaching above $100 million domestic, and it will likely make its bank on its international release.
So while “Ready Player One” opened comparably to “Disclosure Day,” a better way to really compare what “Disclosure Day” might do long term at the box office would be to look at other recent original sci-fi alien movies.
“Arrival” from 2016 opened to $24 million domestic and wound up making $213 million worldwide, doing so on a relatively modest $47 million budget. “Edge of Tomorrow,” which also co-stars Emily Blunt, opened to $28.7 million in 2014 and made $381 million worldwide. Going back even further, 2008’s remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” opened to $30 million domestic and made $233 million worldwide.
Not factoring inflation, “Disclosure Day” opened better than all of those films and, with good audience response, could end up above them all.
Before it opened, if we were looking at best case scenarios for “Disclosure Day,” the film was hoping to reach the heights of something like 2005’s “War of the Worlds” (Universal still has one of that film’s iconic plane crash sets located on its backlot). A $64.8 million domestic opening buoyed that film to $234.2 million domestic and $603 million worldwide. That (space)ship has likely sailed on reaching those heights, but the box office has not been kind to the alien invasion genre in recent years, so for “Disclosure Day” to connect in the way it has is a positive early sign.
It’s almost like Spielberg believed that there’s still something out there.
