Steven Spielberg shares startling UFO theory: ‘What if it’s us, 500,000 years in the future?’

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After an uptick in UFO sightings, E.T. director Steven Spielberg has been left thinking one thing: we aren’t alone in the universe.

“I’ve never seen a UFO,” Spielberg said during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last week. But the Academy Award-winning filmmaker said he believes people who claim to have seen things that they can’t explain. He also thinks the U.S. government is shielding the public from knowing the full story about UFO sightings.

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“I think what has been coming up recently is fascinating. And I think the secrecy that is shrouding all of these sightings and the lack of transparency until the Freedom of Information Act compels certain materials to be released publicly … I think there is something going on that just needs extraordinary due diligence,” he told Colbert.

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Spielberg also said he was skeptical that we are the only planet capable of sustaining life.

“I don’t believe we’re alone in the universe. I think it’s mathematically impossible that we are the only intelligent species in the cosmos,” he maintained. “I think that’s totally impossible. At the same time, it also seems impossible that anybody would visit us from 400 million lightyears from here — except in the movies — unless it figures out some way of jumping the shark, so to speak, and getting here through wormholes.”

Last month, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. has now collected 510 reports of unidentified flying objects.

In 2021, investigators probed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories with many of the reports coming from U.S. navy and air force pilots.

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All but one of the instances remain unexplained, the report said.

Spielberg brought up an intriguing possibility that the sightings could be time-travellers from the far-off future.

“What if they’re not from an advanced civilization 300-million lightyears from here? What if it’s us, 500,000 years into the future coming back to document the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century because they’re anthropologists? And they know something we don’t quite know yet that has occurred, and they’re trying to track the last hundred years of our history.”

Colbert joked that the hopeful part of Spielberg’s theory is that humanity survives that long.

“Yes, we survive,” Spielberg replied. “Or a certain percentage of us survives that allows these other generations to flourish.”

But if there are aliens, Spielberg is betting that they are more like the lovable E.T. from his beloved 1982 classic film.

“I believe if any extraterrestrial civilization has journeyed all the way here, it’s because of curiosity and science, not because of aggression … The fact that they’ve been this patient with us and haven’t turned Earth into a burned out cinder is extraordinary. You have to applaud them for their patience.”

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