That is: the new Steven Spielberg movie. A dud?

Disclosure Day. About revelation of alien visits to earth. And their supposedly hidden interaction, for eons, with humans.

It was supposed to be this summer’s blockbuster and has not been that.

Perhaps it will be a moderate commercial success in audience terms, a mild financial disappointment theatrically, not a disastrous flop.

But when one considers sky-high expectations for it and massive publicity, because it was coming out right when the government was “disclosing” UFO files—and also considering Spielberg blockbusters like Close Encounters, Poltergeist, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, and ET: the Extraterrestrial—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 and $123.2 million internationally. When one considers that theaters keep half the take, the movie is $85–90 million short of recouping production and 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.)

However, by Spielberg standards, that’s a flop and by general measure a “second-tier” release. Compare it to Jurassic Park, which took in more than  a billion.

Was the lackluster release (lagging far behind at least three other summer releases) due to warnings from exorcists?

Several well-known priests recently have cautioned on UFOs (or UAPs), and for good reason: Spirits long have been known to materialize and dematerialize, to appear as orbs of light, or to full-up manifest precisely like those “greys” 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 his archdiocese’s exorcism team and its leader, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, in part due, said the archdiocese’s statement, to a social media post by Monsignor Rossetti about the devilish nature of most “extraterrestrials.”

“Cardinal McElroy said that statements made by Monsignor Rossetti linking UFOs to demonic presence and the [St. Michael] Center’s recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism.”

The cardinal’s action led to a media explosion, dwarfing all the high-profile 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 potential for spiritual peril.

That put UFOs and their hidden nature in headlines as never in the history of ufology. It 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  has been mentioned on podcasts that favor the paranormal (exactly where such warnings are needed most).

By one guesstimate the number who saw it tallied to between five and twenty million. That may be an underestimate.

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 in one promo poster reptilian fingers gently holding the head of a person lying 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, though the movie itself made no direct conclusion).

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

Meanwhile, Monsignor Rossetti’s exorcism ministry, though not in Washington D.C.,  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]