Opening Weekend Forecast: £2M – £3M
Theatrical Total Forecast: £8M – £10M
Cinema advertising company Pearl & Dean has released their predicted opening range for Disclosure Day, opening in the U.K. and Ireland this weekend.
A new Steven Spielberg project is always exciting, and we expect Disclosure Day to deliver healthy rather than spectacular returns.
Spielberg remains one of the few directors, alongside Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese, whose name alone can sell a film. With Disclosure Day the film legend returns to science fiction, the genre that helped define his early career 1982’s E.T. (£27.1 million) and 1977’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (£8 million). The genre has also produced some of his biggest 21st century hits, including 2002’s Minority Report (£20.7 million), 2005’s War of the Worlds (£30.7 million), and 2018’s Ready Player One (£16.7 million). While Disclosure Day lacks the Tom Cruise star power of Minority Report and War Of The Worlds, it still has a strong cast led by Josh O’Connor, Emily Blunt, and Colin Firth.
The trailers have been especially effective, teasing an alien mystery without giving too much away and suggesting a fresh take on classic 20th century first contact thrillers. Science fiction has been performing well at the box office recently, with Dune and Dune: Part II (£22.6 million, £39.8 million), Alien: Romulus (£13.4 million), and Project Hail Mary (£34.4 million) all connecting with audiences. We expect Disclosure Day to benefit from that momentum.
However, Disclosure Day is an original concept, and audiences are less reliable supporters of original films than they once were. Even Spielberg’s other 21st century sci-fi hits were all based on novels.
The trailers also suggest a more earnest, paranoia-driven story than the escapist tone that often plays best in summer. Audiences will certainly turn out for serious blockbusters, as Oppenheimer proved with £59.8 million in July 2023, but that success is rarer. With Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arriving around a month later, audiences may only make room for one prestige-oriented, bigbudget project. Toy Story 5 also opens one week after Disclosure Day, and as a multi-generational four-quadrant release it would be a threat to any film.
As a result, we expect the film to perform more like a traditional auteur-driven project, in the vein of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 (£7.1 million), Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon (£10 million), and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (£12 million).
Comps: Mickey 17 (£7.1 million), Ready Player One (£16.8 Million), Dune: Part II (£39.8 Million)
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