John Williams has finished the score for Disclosure Day, and the shape of that work tells its own story. Steven Spielberg spread the recording across seven sessions over six months, ending with a final date on Feb. 20, 2026, for a collaboration that is now Williams’ 30th with the director.
The timeline is unusual on its face. Film scores are often cut and recorded in a week or two, but this one began when Williams started writing last summer and unfolded with two sessions in October, two in December, one in January and the last in February, with 96 players assembled for the recordings at Sony in the John Williams Music Building.
That long runway matters because Williams is 94 and has been seen in public only in a wheelchair. He had also hinted three years ago that The Fabelmans would probably be his swansong, making Disclosure Day feel less like a routine assignment than an exception pulled out of retirement by a director who knows exactly how to get one more score from his oldest collaborator.
Spielberg appears to have wanted Williams for reasons that go beyond sentiment. Williams had suggested four other composers as possible successors before taking on the film, yet Spielberg still pressed him to do it, then stayed active through the sessions. One musician said Williams was in amazing spirits. Another said he was always gracious and humble, acutely aware of rhythmic flaws and nuances, while Spielberg was delighted with everything.
There was also a practical side to the score that helps explain why the pair kept at it. Williams wrote an especially dark cue that called for four bassoons, along with piano, celeste, synthesizer and two harps, and sources close to the production say he orchestrated the entire score and conducted much of it, even though the credits also name William Ross and Randy Kerber. At one point Spielberg made a musical suggestion, the team tried something different, and they kept it, a small sign of how closely the two still work.
The unanswered question is not whether Disclosure Day marks another chapter for them. It does. Spielberg has already spoken to Williams about a 31st film together, which means the real surprise is that a relationship that began with The Sugarland Express in 1974 is still producing new work at this age, under this kind of schedule, with Williams still insisting on the details that make the music unmistakably his.
