The original Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day is teetering on the edge of becoming a box office success amid its latest predictions. Arriving in a few days on June 12, the sci-fi UFO flick has, for better and worse, remained steady in various box office forecasts since tracking first began for the movie. While the film has a star-studded cast that features Emily Blunt and Colin Firth, and is being pitched as Spielberg’s modern answer to 1982’s E.T. and 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it is coming out during a crowded early summer release calendar that is rife with family-friendly blockbusters. The odds are still in Disclosure Day’s favor to be a hit at the box office, but it will need to face several obstacles.
Disclosure Day will need to fight to become a box office success
One final box office forecast for Disclosure Day has it earning $51.1 million, on the higher end of a $42 million to $55 million range, in its domestic opener from June 12 to June 14. The film is projected to rake in $159 million, or somewhere between $125 million and $206 million, for its full domestic run in the US and Canada.
These predictions come from BoxOfficeTheory, which has the alien-centric adventure being the top-grossing film this coming weekend ahead of Paramount’s Scary Movie 6 ($21.9 million), Focus Features’ Obsession ($21.1 million), and A24’s Backrooms ($15.1 million). This range for the Disclosure Day’s domestic start is higher than other forecasts, namely the $40 million to $50 million range from BoxOfficePro and the $35 million from Variety that’s based on more traditional tracking methods. In fact, the latter report warns that the $35 million figure is “below the $50 million that some studios argue a film of that size should debut to in order to justify its cost.”
As we reported earlier, the good news for Disclosure Day is that it doesn’t have as high of a bar to clear in breaking even at the box office compared to other blockbusters. Reportedly, its production budget is $115 million and its break-even point is $300 million at the global box office. Variety has corroborated this benchmark, writing that “because theaters keep roughly half of ticket sales and Disclosure Day’s marketing costs are about $80 million, rival executives believe the movie will need to earn $300 million globally to be profitable.”
If current projections hold at the estimated $159 million domestic haul for the film (which is based on a more bullish prediction), then it will only need to match this number in its international total to break even. On that front, the most recent Steven Spielberg films have had a high percentage of its box office totals come from regions outside of the US, whether they were box office successes or not — 2022’s The Fabelmans had 62%, 2021’s West Side Story had 49%, and 2018’s Ready Player One had 77.3%. So if Disclosure Day is able to follow this pattern, it should cross the $300 million mark given enough time in theaters.
That said, original films — that is, movies not based on an existing IP or a real person — tend to be a harder sell than most. That’s why Fandango’s top 10 most-anticipated movies this summer, as voted by audiences, are all remakes and sequels. The hope is that Disclosure Day, with its current predictions, will match the domestic openers for Sinners at $48 million or Weapons at $43.5 million.
The BoxOfficeTheory report questions whether the casual moviegoers beyond the film’s “core male audience, predominately over the age of 35” will buy tickets to see it amid the competition, which includes Toy Story 5, Supergirl, and Minions & Monsters. Fortunately, Disclosure Day’s appeal to mature audiences will help separate itself from these three contenders.
In better news, Disclosure Day has received high review scores, which should provide positive word-of-mouth. ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim gave it a solid 8 out of 10, while the film stands at a strong 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing.
