A.D. After Disclosure

Dark Skies | Accept No Imitations

Friends and supporters have been contacting us, many with congratulations on how our “Dark Skies” has been made into a new film, starring Keri Russell, to be released by Dimension Films next February. While it sounds like a dream, we tell them, it’s actually a nightmare.

To set the record straight, we’re Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman, the two writer/producers who created the NBC series called “Dark Skies.” It was produced by Columbia TV (now Sony) and aired in 1996 and 1997. We wrote the pilot, multiple episodes and produced all twenty hours that were aired in primetime on Saturday nights.

Our original “Dark Skies” introduced viewers to an alien invasion that featured a continuing focus on the mysterious and terrifying abduction phenomenon. So our well-intentioned friends can be forgiven if they hear about the Dimension Films version that focuses on an alien abduction and assume we had something to do with it. While that is decidedly not the case, our definitive version may have inspired it.

Our “Dark Skies” had been in the news even before Dimension decided to use our title for their film. Our series was given a world-wide release on DVD in 2011 from both Shout Factory (US) and Medium Rare Entertainment (UK). In dozens of reviews, the work received critical praise as a classic that has stood the test of time in the sci-fi and UFO media. It also spawned new interest in the reboot of our series, something that we were talking to Sony TV about when the news from Dimension Films broke.

Our "Dark Skies" has established itself in the minds of a significant number of science fiction fans as a gripping piece of conspiracy drama set in the world of UFOs and abductions. It anchored NBC's Saturday night "Thrillogy" concept in the 1996 season premiere and starred Eric Close ("Nashville") and the late film character actor J.T. Walsh (“Sling Blade”). Its main title design won the Emmy award and its pilot screenplay received a Writers Guild nomination. The Syfy Channel aired the entire series multiple times. Since 2010 there's been a Facebook page where thousands of fans from many different countries push Sony for a TV revival. 

And yet here we are. A film in the same genre as our work is being promoted right now using the same exact title as our work. Most Hollywood businesses legitimately consider creative and artistic interests and rights in these cases. This one seems to have slipped through the cracks of acceptability.

Supporters of the creative rights of writers should ask Dimension Films to let their film stand on its own merits and call it by a different title. "Dark Skies" is taken. 

Join the Dark Skies Resistance @ Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/darkskiesufo

See the Dark Skies Playlist @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A1058EDE798E4B1

Read more about Dark Skies @ AfterDisclosure.com
http://www.afterdisclosure.com/dark-skies/

Get the original, classic and definitive Dark Skies series @ Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Skies-Declassified-Complete-Series/dp/B00465I156

WGA (Writers Guild of America) Credit, 1996
“Dark Skies” | Created by Bryce Zabel & Brent V. Friedman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115151/

50 Years Since the Betty & Barney Hill Abduction

The 1961 Betty & Barney Hill UFO abduction is being developed as a feature film by Stellar Productions.

The feature film, Shades of Gray, will tell their story based on new information from the book Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience by Stanton T. Friedman and Kathleen Marden.

All ufologists know, of course, that Betty and Barney are not just the Flintstones' next door neighbors, but the names that belong to the Hills, the married couple who became the ignition point of the modern alien abduction era.

50 years ago, on September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home from Canada and about 100 miles northwest of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when they saw a UFO at close range and then suffered one of the first recorded "missing time" episodes. Later, under hypnosis, they gave strikingly similar and detailed accounts of their kidnapping.

It is a compelling and seminal narrative of the UFO abduction phenomenon. Over the years, it has spawned books, articles, a film and even, in my own instance, an appearance in the Dark Skies series.

I'm pleased to announce, in time for the 50th anniversary, that my production company, Stellar Productions, has optioned the film rights to Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (New Page Books) by Stanton T. Friedman, MSc. and Kathleen Marden. Friedman, of course, is the leading scientific ufologist of our time and a former nuclear physicist, the man who broke the Roswell case. Marden is Betty Hill's niece and the trustee of her estate. I'm thrilled to be in business with them in bringing this profound and unsettling case to what we all hope will be its largest audience yet.

Their book, published in 2007, reveals a wealth of new information about the Hills’ lives, the UFO encounter and abduction, and the scientific evaluation of the evidence. It has given new life to the Hills’ extraordinary story, and has caused me to get involved.

I will be working on this with friend and producer Don Most, my collaborator on Majic Men, the film script that was just completed about the competition between Stan Friedman and Don Schmitt to prove the Roswell story beyond reasonable doubt during the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s. We'll have an update on that project soon.

This won't be the first time that Betty and Barney's story has been filmed or a book written about them, but it will be the most definitive book/film combo that has come to the screen. A 1966 book, The Interrupted Journey, written by John Fuller, topped the New York Times best-seller list and went on to be the basis of a primetime NBC movie of the week, The UFO Incident, in October 1975.

Read The Huffington Post Coverage >>>

Captured! -- the book I have under option that will form the basis of the film Shades of Gray -- includes previously unpublished information about the lives of the Hills before and after Barney's death in 1969, their status as celebrities, Betty's experiences as a UFO investigator, and other activities before her death in 2004. Kathleen Marden writes in depth about new details from her discussions with her aunt Betty about the event and her riveting hypnosis sessions about their time onboard the spacecraft. Stanton Friedman, the original investigator of the Roswell incident, reviews and refutes the arguments of those who have attacked the Hill case, as well as the star map that Betty Hill saw inside the craft and later recreated. 

That map, by the way, provides a whole new window on where humanity fits in the larger scheme of things by showing two sun-like stars that are 30 times closer to each other than our sun is to the next star over and a cool billion years older than our own sun and less than 40 light years away from us.

Hollywood and the Discourse on Disclosure

Many a UFO skeptic will tell you that UFOlogy (and, nowadays, exopolitics) feeds on and thrives largely as a result of images projected by the American entertainment industry: it is Hollywood, they’ll insist, that fuels the UFO mythos.

The art historian, John Moffitt, for example, views UFOs and extraterrestrials purely as “hyperreal” constructs – which is to say that they are “real” in a cultural sense, but have no grounding in our lived historical reality. Moffitt suggests that, as far as UFOs are concerned, there never was a “real” to begin with – the UFO phenomenon is entirely psychosocial, a complex simulacrum sustained in large part by mass-media images and audience culture. Moffitt notes that “American films and television have now become the major vehicles for propagating in a postmodernist, transglobal “visual culture” the popular imagery of lurking ETs and their high-tech UFO vehicles.”[i] In Moffitt’s view, “the extraterrestrials only persist as recognisable visual phenomena due to zealous attention paid to them by their audience culture. No audience culture: no attention.”[ii]

The suggestion inherent in this “audience culture” theory is that Hollywood “creatives” simply bring forth from their fertile imaginations entirely original UFOlogical ideas and design concepts which are then projected to and absorbed by an (assumed) passive audience, provoking continual reports of UFOs and aliens, certain details from which, in turn, feed back into the entertainment industry to fuel the endless hyperreal cycle that is the modern UFO phenomenon. The psychologist Susan Blackmore, propounding this same idea within the framework of memetics, suggests that UFOs and aliens are “a memeplex consisting of the idea of four-foot high, skinny, large-headed creatures with big black eyes, an image of the ships they come in... and all the other details we are fed through the media.”[iii] 

Can UFO Visitors Actually Be Time Travelers?

For what it's worth, the UFO field is buzzing about time travel, anticipating that it is the Next Big Thing in this unfolding story. 

At the recent IUFOC in Phoenix, for example, Bentwaters witness James Penniston re-told the story about how in September 1994 he allowed himself to be hypnotized to help him recall what happened in Rendlesham forest and what it might mean. In the session, Penniston stated that he received telepathic communication from a landed craft in the forest and that the craft’s occupants had come from Earth’s future to gather genetic material to help them survive.

When I heard this, I knew that sounded more than a little familiar to me. Then I saw a post today from UFO skeptic Ian Ridpath who offered the explanation that Penniston may have gotten the idea from a movie he'd seen that claimed the same thing and aired just ten months before his hypnosis.

I wrote that movie.

In November 1993,the first original film for the Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) was produced from my screenplay, Official Denial. Although it was about the UFO cover-up and was the first piece I wrote that invoked Majestic-12, it contained a twist ending in which the question turned out to be not where the aliens were from, but when they were from. The Others were not alien after all: they were ourselves. Having bred diversity from their DNA in order to survive an environmental collapse, they had returned backward in time to save us, and thus to save themselves. The abduction of certain people was part of a protocol to follow specific bloodlines that were important in DNA development and ancestry. Later, I followed that "Bloodlines" theory up in Dark Skies as well, as that was the title of our final episode.

For those who aren't familiar with him, James Penniston was an Air Force Staff Sergeant at a joint U.S. Air Force and Royal Air Force base at Bentwaters in the UK. On December 26, 1980, he was sent to investigate strange lights in the forest. What he and others found was a triangular craft that he examined at close range and for an extended period. This has become one of the best documented UFO sightings in history, referred to as the Rendlesham Forest Incident.

My film was released on video in May 1994, only a few months before Penniston’s hypnosis. As Ridpath interprets it, "The similarities between the film and Penniston’s story are striking. Of course, we have no evidence that Penniston actually saw this film, so it could simply be coincidence."

{voices} Donald Schmitt | Voting "Present" on Disclosure

Many of you will recall that gripping scene from the Showtime original movie Roswell when the oversight group of high level Pentagon officers and Washington officials are round-tabling the situation which has just transpired in Roswell, New Mexico. “What do we tell the people?” laments one of the generals invoking the most pertinent question of that time. “What if they realize that we are no longer in control of the skies!” he decries. The Secretary of War very stoically responds, “They’d be right.”

I have no doubt many such discussions have actually taken place since 1947 and at times within the Oval Office itself. Yet, most presidents appear to have simply voted “present.” Deep dark secrets such as the reality of the UFO phenomenon seem to go to the grave with those possessing the truth on such a seismic issue.

My fear remains that the “old order” is not passing it down to the new. That stated, I have long been aware of the growing faction within the military that desire the truth come out. But as evidenced with the four explanations of the Roswell Incident alone, the powers-that-be are clearly attempting to run out the clock until the final witness passes on… cover-up complete.

Donald Schmitt is the co-author of the best-selling book, Witness to Roswell, and is the leading specialist who continues to investigate the Roswell Incident. He is the former co-director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, where he served as Director of Special Investigations for ten years. Prior to that, he was a special investigator for the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek. The Showtime movie Roswell was based on first book, UFO Crash at Roswell. His latest book and life rights have been optioned, along with those of Stanton Friedman, as the basis for the feature film project, Majic Men.

When one addresses Disclosure, one need first consider -- to whose benefit? How could the United States government acknowledge a sixty year deception and still retain the trust of its electorate? Then there remains their culpability morass. Roswell remains a stark example of how people in power can resort to extreme measures to protect their own irrational behavior. Our Constitution prevents the government from resorting to such actions and today, which politician is going to admit that people’s civil rights were indeed violated. One does not threaten to “kill children” over the recovery of a weather balloon. We have accumulated ample testimony that this was a rather routine reaction at the time. Juries across the nation would decidedly rule in favor of civilians in such incendiary situations.

Historically, we know that the question was addressed back at that time. Based on official White House log records, the White House resembled a war room with the number of high level meetings which took place at the time of the crash in New Mexico. And, since then, there have been numerous other lost opportunities. Understandably, these were well beyond the boundaries of the official, public UFO study projects. Certain elements in Washington or elsewhere were contemplating what became the inconceivable: Should we tell the public the truth?

Rumors have prevailed that such sentiment arose on certain golf courses during the Eisenhower administration. Supposedly, Walt Disney was even consulted to produce a film to have something “in the can” in the event the government was forced to remain relevant when Klatu landed in Washington. UFO conspiracy buffs have speculated that JFK was assassinated because he planned on full Disclosure. Unfortunately, all such plans may now be within Disney’s cryogenic chamber.

Demonstrably, I can site specific examples where there may indeed have been, at best, attempts to marshal a small sampling of reality. Each situation was allegedly advanced by specific administrations connected to the subject, ironically, not officially, but for personal reasons. Not for having access to the “secret vaults’ but rather being told no vaults existed.

The first time was during the Ford administration following the resignation of Richard Nixon. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, former scientific consultant to the Air Force Project Blue Book, met privately in Washington with Ford’s Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Hynek didn’t mince words when he demanded to be told the truth after twenty years of service simply to be dismissed with no answers from the Pentagon. Rumsfeld forcefully lectured Hynek that he “had no right to know.” Hynek stirred the pot enough to receive a phone call about a year latter from a close friend within the Chicago media where the astrophysicist had established the Center for UFO Studies. The media had just been “tipped off” that an announcement pertaining to the subject was about to come out and they wanted Hynek in studio for an immediate reaction. “We’ll get back to you,” was the open promise that quickly evaporated. No excuse was ever given.

A few years later in 1977, the next possible opportunity surfaced under President Jimmy Carter. As before, Hynek received another late day call, but this time it was more direct and specific, and reliable. TV/radio station WGN had received an actual call from a verified source in Washington and the word was that the president or a presidential representative was about to break into live TV and make a special announcement… about UFOs! Hynek, always the curious scientist, was picked up by a cab and driven into downtown Chicago to sit and wait. And wait and wait, as the station remained on a total standby. After a number of hours passed, an exasperated Hynek was delivered back to his home in Evanston, none the better for this continuing twenty-year-old game. The last word the TV studio received was “Its all off. Forget about it.” But Hynek and certain powers in Washington would not.

Dark Skies and the Unified Conspiracy Theory

When Dark Skies debuted on NBC in the fall of 1996, it was almost 50 years after the infamous Roswell UFO Incident. The report that a UFO had crashed in New Mexico — and the subsequent cover-up of the story — is a watershed moment for the UFO community and those who believe it began a campaign of misinformation by the U.S. government.

They're here. They're hostile. 

Set in the 1960s during the administration of President John F. Kennedy, the series revolves around a young idealist named John Loengard (Eric Close). A fresh recruit to the congressional offices on Capitol Hill, Loengard is tasked with auditing certain government programs. This leads Loengard to investigate Project Blue Book, the Air Force study of UFOs. 

After interviewing UFO abductees Betty and Barney Hill, Loengard encounters Captain Bach (J.T. Walsh) and the men of Majestic — a top-secret organization that has been fighting a hidden war against aliens since the Roswell Incident in 1947.

Kevin Wohler writes about film and television for FilmGuru.Net. In addition to being a fan of Dark Skies, he created one of the show's first fan websites, Dark Skies Over Kansas. He's still waiting for a second season of the show so he can find out why the Hive created disco. 

Together with his girlfriend Kim Sayers (Megan Ward), Loengard eventually turns over evidence of this cover-up — and Majestic — to President Kennedy. Soon after, Kennedy is assassinated, pushing Loengard and Sayers to run from Majestic and find the truth.

To say that Dark Skies was an ambitious undertaking would be a major understatement. Co-creators Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman took 50 years of UFO mythology and wove it into American history. 

History as we know it is a lie.

Each episode of Dark Skies not only tackles a new piece of UFO mythology, but also places it in time with an important historical event. Whether the Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 or the death of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in June of that year, Dark Skies ties its stories to the events of that decade.

But our knowledge of history is a lie — as Loengard repeatedly reminds us in the show's opening. 

The stories in Dark Skies are not merely set in the '60s, they become an underlying cause to the events of the decade. The UFO mythology takes on a historical tone, and the alien conspiracy is woven into the fabric of history. The turbulent decade becomes a metaphor for the fear, anger and frustration of the UFO movement. And it's not without controversy.

The Theme of DARK SKIES? Disclosure.

The People's Right-to-Know -vs- The People Can't Handle the Truth

The news breaking across the Internet today is that the DVD company Shout! Factory has officially put out its press release stating what readers of this website have known for months: that the NBC series Dark Skies, which had been caught in a limbo of music rights and other issues, is finally coming to DVD on January 18, 2011 (and, if you pre-order now from Shout, you can still have it in time for Christmas).

In fact, the series was one of the first things that series co-creator Bryce Zabel and A.D. co-author Richard Dolan bonded over. Bryce had called Rich to discuss optioning his UFOs and the National Security State for film and television and, it turned out, Rich had been a big fan of Dark Skies. The more they talked, the more they realized they had to write A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact.

When discussing Dark Skies, they realized that, at its core, it is really a twenty-hour film experience on the subject of UFO/ET Disclosure. In fact, it was conceived to be just that from the very beginning. Bryce and his co-creator of Dark Skies, Brent V. Friedman, wanted to put the argument about Disclosure into the very heart of the series and so they did it with two central characters. John Loengard (played by Eric Close) begins the series as a naive congressional aide during the Kennedy administration who is lured into a covert role as a Man-in-Black working for Majestic-12. Throughout, he maintains the position that the people have a right to know the truth, whatever it is. His boss, Captain Frank Bach (played by J.T. Walsh) takes the opposite position based on his experience working in Naval intelligence, that the people can't handle the truth. In order for the drama to work, this push-pull of Disclosure had to be a fair fight.

Here is a scene from the pilot episode of Dark Skies, "The Awakening," that takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis where Loengard confronts Bach on the issue of secrecy.

Presumably, most of the sympathy of readers of this A.D. After Disclosure site probably lies with the Loengard position. But the opposite position, coming from the gifted actor J.T. Walsh, has its own compelling logic, as seen through the eyes of a man who has the ultimate responsibility.

If you want to see the Emmy-winning main title sequence, the NBC promos and other related videos, please visit our dedicated Dark Skies YouTube page. Finally, here is the Shout! Factory press release:

Dark Skies: This Year's Out-of-This-World Stocking Stuffer

There's more news to report about the upcoming DVD release of the Dark Skies TV series. While the general release is scheduled for January 18, 2011, Shout Factory! is now taking pre-orders and everyone who buys it now from their website will receive their order by December 9, 2010 -- a full six weeks before the official street date -- making it the Disclosure stocking stuffer of the holiday season. Plus, early buyers will receive a limited-edition lithograph with their purchase.

They're here... they're hostile... and powerful people don't want you to know. History as we know it is a lie.

Shout Factory! has done a tremendous job of making this a "value added" DVD release. They recorded three hours of audio commentaries to go with the pilot ("The Awakening") and the series finale ("Bloodlines") with both of the creators and the series stars Eric Close and Megan Ward. Plus, they shot a 90 minute behind-the-scenes documentary, and included sales presentations, NBC promos and lots of other extras. Here's the news as it was covered on the TV Shows on DVD site:

"The official "wide" retail street date is January 18th, and you can pre-order it from Amazon at a discount (as of this writing the cost there is $33.99, roughly a quarter off the list price). However, Shout! Factory is giving fans an opportunity to own this title BEFORE Christmas, if they don't mind paying the full list price of $44.99 SRP (plus shipping & handling). If you order Dark Skies - The Declassified Complete Series directly from Shout!'s online store in time, you'll get it by December 9th, and the studio will also throw in - while supplies last - a terrific 16-inch-square lithograph."

Shout Factory! has gone out of their way to mount an unusual campaign that makes full use of the conspiratorial black-ops zeitgeist that the series made the most of. There's a two-page "intercepted memo" that's been circulated, purportedly from cover-up insiders who are non-too-pleased with the Dark Skies DVD release. At least, we assume Shout Factory! is behind it!  

UK Gets DARK SKIES Today

Given that they've been trying to get Dark Skies released on DVD for over a decade now, it may seem odd that when it finally happens there are two companies involved, both releasing within months of each other. Here's the 411 on that:

Medium Rare of the United Kingdom is the first out of the gate with its October 18, 2010 release. There is an outstanding review at the Cineology site today, written by Alex Geairns. In fact, they include this information about the A.D. After Disclosure project:

Bryce has played his part by co-penning a book called “A.D. After Disclosure” – out on 25 October 2010. It looks to what will happen when the Governments of the world finally have to admit that aliens have been among us for centuries. A quote to illustrate Bryce and co-author Richard Dolan’s aspect on this: “The issue that was hushed up by one generation, then turned into an object of derision by another, now demands to be heard straight up in ours.”

Indeed, Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell says of the tome: “This new book by Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel is an important attempt to prepare us for what will one day be inevitable: an open understanding that we are not alone. Not in this universe, and not even on Planet Earth.”

Not living in the UK, we're not sure where you can go to buy the Dark Skies DVD from stores, but it is available on Amazon UK. Here's another link to Play.com where one of our readers from Norway says it's free delivery even to his country. 

Fans in the United States, in particular, can't celebrate quite yet. The UK release DVD will not play in their DVD machines because it is "Region 2," which means it will only play on European Region 2 or multi-region DVD players. In the States, fans will have to wait for Shout! Factory to release the U.S. version on January 18, 2011. (Here's how the Regional DVD system works.)

It will be worth waiting for, however, as the Shout! Factory version is going to have all kinds of extras coming with it. They include three hours of original audio commentary with the series leads Eric Close and Megan Ward and producers Bryce Zabel and Brent V. Friedman. There is also going to be a 90-minute documentary that includes lengthy interviews, plus promotional materials that have never been seen before.

TV Shows on DVD had some information about this release last week including something that looks like a leaked memo about suppressing the series that we hope is part of a viral campaign, although it definitely looks authentic.

{quotes} STAN LEE | Tomorrow's News Today

Stan Lee’s name is almost synonymous with comic books. He was the man in charge of Marvel’s creative output during its heady rise to fame during the 1960s. Almost all the characters being turned into movies these days -- Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, X-Men, the Avengers -- were created, co-created, or re-invented by Lee during his days as the company’s patriarch. 

Over the years, Lee has given a great deal of thought to aliens. “I always try to go against the grain and use them as the starting point for the story and try to twist it,” says Lee. “If they’re introduced to us as being good, then they’re actually bad. If we’re told to fear them, then they’re probably here to help us."

Lee believes Disclosure would stimulate an “incredible amount” of curiosity from the public, that people would be “intensely interested” in the news. After reading an early draft, Stan Lee offered his endorsement for A.D. After Disclosure.

"I’ve imagined this future many times, but these guys actually wrote the book on it! Zabel and Dolan have brilliantly created a compelling blend of history and informed speculation that makes their exciting world seem like tomorrow’s news today. Don’t dare miss it! ‘Nuff said."

Stan Lee, Comicbook Creator, Spiderman, Avengers, X-Men

In the past, Lee heard personal testimony to the reality of UFOs from a close friend. His “right-hand man” at Marvel was his operations director and artist Sol Brodsky. Lee describes him as being very “level-headed” and so was shocked to hear from Brodsky about a car trip he had just made to Las Vegas. “When we were driving, I think we saw a flying saucer,” Lee quotes Brodsky as telling him. “It was fast, it didn’t have any wings, stopped right over our car, hovered, then zipped away faster than anything I’d ever seen.” Both men wondered if it was a government test of an experimental aircraft, but Brodsky believed it was more than that.

It's a terrific honor for us to have a visionary and futurist of Stan Lee's creative output recommend this book.

Stan's current company, POW! Entertainment, is his new creative home. Fans, however, know to look for his terrific cameos in all the Marvel live-action films, and are looking forward to seeing him in Thor, Captain America, the Avengers and the Spiderman re-boot.

Here is the link to read the Introduction to A.D. After Disclosure. And, of course, if you want to learn more about the world as it will exist after disclosure of UFO/ET reality, we thank you for considering a purchase of the book through the button below.