The 4th of July, Independence Day holiday of our international cousins saw the start of a rather clever campaign for the re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind on what will be its 40th anniversary year. To start that campaign Sony released a teaser trailer which you can view below.

However, no actual footage from the film is featured in the teaser, which is aptly named This Means Something. Instead, we witness 56 seconds of air traffic control radar animation locating an unidentified flying object targeting one of its planes with audio of air traffic control in a mild panic.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

To accompany the teaser for the re-release of the film which will have a one-week theatrical viewing slot in September, two months before its actual anniversary, Sony have set up a special website – WeAreStillNotAlone.Com – which takes you to a holding page prompting you to enter your details to be kept up to date with UFO sightings but this again is all part of the clever campaign, along the same lines as the campaign as Alien: Covenant.

Close Encounters was a long-cherished project for Steven Spielberg, which started back in 1973 when he struck a deal with Columbia Pictures to make a sci-fi film. 1977 saw the actual release of the film which starred Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, and Cary Guffey. The story focuses on Roy Neary, an everyday blue-collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO).

The 40th anniversary of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is officially on Nov. 16, but the re-release will hit select cinemas for one week on Sept. 1.