See Sony’s Mysterious Teaser Trailer for the ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ Re-Release
While you and I may know July 3rd as “Fasting in Anticipation of Tomorrow’s Onslaught of Grilled Meats Day,” a certain subset of conspiracy-monger recognizes it as World UFO Day. Apparently, one such believer resides at Sony, as the studio released a mysterious new video on the 3rd and included the hashtag #WorldUFODay in the caption on YouTube. In it, a glowing green air traffic controller’s matrix appears on screen with some slightly-garbled dialogue in the background about an enigmatic foreign craft entering their airspace. While some may find its significance confounding, Spielberg fans recognized the clip straightaway.
The video nods to Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a seminal work in the alien-movie canon and the Francois Truffaut acting filmography. While some fearful YouTube commenters speculated that the video was presaging the announcement of a Close Encounters remake/reboot/reimagining/re-what-have-you, it looks like Sony’s just trying to gas audiences up for an upcoming re-release of the film into theaters. Deadline confirms that Sony will remind us we’re not alone with a weeklong run in U.S. and Canadian cineplexes starting September 1, to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the film’s original theatrical release.
Everything about Close Encounters deserves to be seen in the rightful theatrical environment; the eerie glowing lights really pop in absolute darkness, the score demands the biggest soundsystem in your tri-county area, and Bob Balaban’s face is only truly seen when it’s twenty feet tall. This September, remember — we’re not alone.