Culture and science
Movies, series and documentaries, from Close Encounters to Skinwalker Ranch on TV. 178 events, newest first.
Media31 May 2019
History premiered a six-part series following Luis Elizondo, Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy and former Pentagon official Chris Mellon. It featured Navy pilot David Fravor describing his 2004 encounter and other accounts tied to the Navy cases.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Media26 May 2019
The Black Vault posted Dave Beaty's documentary The Nimitz Encounters in full on YouTube with his permission. The film retells the November 2004 Tic Tac events off southern California through CGI re-creations based on accounts from sailors and naval aviators.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
Media15 Jan 2019
The CW premiered Roswell, New Mexico, its second adaptation of Melinda Metz's Roswell High novels about aliens living in the town, after the WB's Roswell series of 1999.
Media8 Jan 2019
History premiered a period drama from executive producer Robert Zemeckis, starring Aidan Gillen as astronomer J. Allen Hynek, with episodes drawn from Air Force Blue Book cases. It ran two seasons before History ended it in 2020.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Public domain
MediaSep 2018
Ryan Eslinger's film UFO, with Alex Sharp and Gillian Anderson, follows a math student trying to explain a saucer-like object seen hovering over an airport runway. One review said the story was based on an unexplained sighting at a Chicago airport.
Media22 Mar 2018
Stanford and UCSF researchers published a whole-genome study in Genome Research showing that 'Ata', a tiny skeleton from Chile's Atacama Desert promoted in a 2013 UFO documentary as possibly alien, was a human female, likely a fetus, carrying rare bone-related mutations.
Media3 Jan 2018
Fox premiered season 11 of The X-Files with the episode My Struggle III, continuing the revival in which agents Mulder and Scully search for their son William amid a looming global threat.
Photo: Fox Broadcasting Company, Public domain
Media2018
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell's feature revisited Bob Lazar's 1989 claim of working on alien craft near Area 51. The Orchard acquired it in 2018 for release that year; it later reached Netflix in 2019, and Lazar then appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast. Lazar's education claims have long been disputed.
Military18 Dec 2017
Two days after the New York Times revealed AATIP, retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor told ABC News about chasing a wingless, roughly 40-foot white object off California in 2004, saying he thought it 'was not from this world.' He later repeated his account under oath to Congress in 2023.
Photo: U.S. House Committee On Oversight and Accountability, Public domain
Media21 Apr 2017
Cinelou Films released Phoenix Forgotten, a found-footage horror film imagining teenagers who vanish while filming a search for the source of the 1997 Phoenix Lights. Ridley Scott was among its producers. The story is fiction.
Media26 Feb 2017
At the 89th Academy Awards, Arrival, Denis Villeneuve's film about linguists decoding visiting aliens, won for sound editing. It had eight nominations, including Best Picture, directing and adapted screenplay.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
MediaNov 2016
Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, a first-contact story centered on a linguist trying to communicate with visiting aliens, opened in November 2016. It grossed more than $200 million worldwide and earned eight Academy Award nominations, winning for sound editing.
Photo: Paramount Pictures, Public domain
Media24 Jan 2016
Fox aired the first episode of an X-Files revival after the NFC Championship game, drawing about 13.4 million viewers in preliminary ratings. The return reunited Mulder and Scully and brought the paranormal-investigation series back to prime time.
Photo: GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0
Skinwalker Ranch2016
Robert Bigelow's company sold the ranch in 2016 to Utah real estate executive Brandon Fugal, whose ownership stayed private until a 2020 History series. The Salt Lake Tribune cited a reported price of about $500,000.
Photo: Paul from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media15 May 2015
Six years after filming, Paramount gave Oren Peli's found-footage film Area 51, about friends who break into the Nevada base, a one-weekend run at 16 Alamo Drafthouse theaters alongside a video-on-demand release. Reviews were poor.
Media2015
In 2015 Mexican TV personality Jaime Maussan championed the 'Roswell Slides', photos claimed to show an alien body. The figure was identified as the mummified body of a two-year-old boy, and the slides are now counted among the hoaxes he promoted.
Media2015
Filmmaker Jennifer Stein released a documentary on Travis Walton's account of being taken aboard a craft in Arizona in 1975 and how the claim shaped his life. Stein said she made it to counter efforts to debunk him; the case remains disputed.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media19 Dec 2014
Rajkumar Hirani's Hindi film PK opened, with Aamir Khan as an alien stranded in the Rajasthan desert after his ship's remote is stolen. His questions about human religious customs drive the satire. Disney-UTV released it on a record number of screens.
Photo: Bollywood Hungama, CC BY 3.0
Media4 Apr 2014
IFC released Alien Abduction, a found-footage horror film directed by Matty Beckerman about a family who encounter aliens while camping. Its story is inspired by the Brown Mountain Lights reported in western North Carolina.
Photo: Thomson200, CC0
Media28 Feb 2014
A cable documentary series built on the Mutual UFO Network's archive of more than 70,000 case files premiered on Feb. 28, 2014, with MUFON members appearing as hosts. It ran two seasons and reflected UFO case material moving into reality-style TV.
MediaJun 2013
Mirage Men, a documentary based on Mark Pilkington's book of the same name, premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest. The book argues that U.S. intelligence agencies promoted UFO stories for disinformation and cover purposes rather than simply hiding them.
Photo: Sheffdocfest, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media22 Apr 2013
Sirius, a film built around ufologist Steven Greer's claims, premiered in Hollywood. It promoted a six-inch specimen found in Chile's Atacama Desert as a possible non-human being and argued UFO secrecy protects energy interests. Its origin was unresolved when the film came out.
Media22 Feb 2013
Dimension Films released Dark Skies, written and directed by Scott Stewart, in which a suburban family comes to believe aliens are targeting them for abduction. Reviewers called it a familiar riff on earlier abduction stories such as Communion.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Whistleblowers2013
In the 2013 documentary Mirage Men, former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Richard Doty admitted infiltrating UFO circles. The film says Doty and colleagues fed false material to researchers, notably New Mexico businessman Paul Bennewitz.
Photo: The Evening Times, Public domain
MediaJun 2012
A Kelton Research survey of 1,114 U.S. adults, commissioned by National Geographic Channel to promote its series Chasing UFOs, found 36 percent believed aliens had visited Earth, 48 percent were unsure, and 79 percent thought the government kept UFO information secret.
Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 4.0
