That is, the new Steven Spielberg movie.

Disclosure Day. About revelation of alien visits to earth. And their interbreeding with humans.

It was supposed to be this summer’s blockbuster and has been anything but (thank God).

A moderate commercial success in audience terms, a mild financial disappointment theatrically, and not a disastrous flop.

But when one considers the sky-high expectations for it, an d the massive publicity because it was coming out right when the government was “disclosing” UFO files, and also considering Spielberg blockbusters like Close Encounters, Poltergeist, Indiana Jones, and ET, it is a disappointment for those who were rooting for it.

The production and marketing costs were $195 million. So far receipts have been $116.6 million in the United States and Canada, $123.2 million internationally. When one considers that the theaters keep at least half the take, the movie is $85–90 million short of recouping production and worldwide marketing costs through theatrical rentals alone. (There presumably will be more income when it is streamed as well as used in hotels and airplanes. Thus, it may end up turning a modest profit.)

By Spielberg standards, that’s a flop. Defintely a “second-tier” release. His movie Jurassic Park, for example, took in more than  a billion.

Three competing movies (including the highly-lauded Odyssey) have taken in more than a billion each.

Was the lackluster release due to warnings from exorcists?

Several well-known ones have been on podcasts decrying UFOs (or UAPs) as potentially demonic. Spirits long have been known to materialize and dematerialize, to appear as orbs of light, or to full-up manifest precisely like as those “greys” that have been made famous in recent years.

But the biggest blow to the movie was inadvertent: the actions of Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington D.C., who dismissed the diocesan exorcism team and its leader, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, in part due, said the archdiocesan statement, to a Monsignor Rossetti’s social media post about the devilish nature of most “extraterrestrials.”

The cardinal’s radical action led to a media response that dwarfed all the appearances of exorcists on podcasts and other forms of social media during the past several years. Though he intended anything but, Cardinal McElroy’s move caused huge public awareness of aliens and their spiritual danger.

That put UFOs and their hidden nature in headlines as never before in ufolgical history.

The dismissal was covered by at least 25 major media outlets or programs in June and July 2026, including Associated Press, The New York Times, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, the London Guardian, the London Mail, the London Independent, NBC-Washington, NBC Los Angeles, ABC 13 News, as well as going “viral” on Twitter feeds, YouTube podcasts, TikTok, Instagram, and Catholic  and Christian publications such as Our Sunday Visitor, America Magazine, the Christian Post, CBN, National Catholic Register, the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops’ website, Catholic News Service, Relevant Radio, various diocesan sites, and other Christian outlets.

It  was been mentioned on podcasts that favor the paranormal (exactly where such warnings are needed most).

What timing God has: This was all the week before or during the release of Disclosure Day, and most probably pricked a hole on Spielberg’s balloon, a wrongheaded movie depicting aliens as benevolent and reptilian fingers gently and shieldingly holding the head of a person laying down, presumably aboard a spacecraft as what could be taken as a medical procedure involving examination or hybridization (in other words, ET as the creator of modern humanity).

Spielberg’s other extraterrestrial movies had made aliens seem likwise parental (think Close Encounters) or all but warm and fuzzy (think ET). Its lukewarm reception at a time of great deception comes as a relief.

Meanwhile, Monsignor Rossetti’s exorcism ministry will be online and back in full swing on September 28, for he remains a priest in good standing in his home diocese of Syracuse and one who did a great public service in a world so ready to embrace deceit.

[resources: Monsignor Rossetti’s books, My Confrontation with Hell, Diary of An American Exorcist, and When the Lion Roars]