THE MARTIANS RETURN TO NEW JERSEY
Eighty-eight years after Orson Welles landed his fictional Martians at Grover's Mill on a Sunday night radio broadcast that panicked the country, a Steven Spielberg picture about extraterrestrial disclosure, shot all over the Garden State, played a special advance screening at the Cranford Theater. The state that hosted our first imagined contact got the second one too. Different medium. Same dirt.
Written by Adam Nelson, Co-Founder, Socko!
Photography by Marc Brodsky and Adam Nelson
Location: The Cranford Theater, Cranford, New Jersey
Eighty-eight years after Orson Welles landed his fictional Martians at Grover's Mill on a Sunday night radio broadcast that panicked the country, a Steven Spielberg picture about extraterrestrial disclosure, shot all over the Garden State, played a special advance screening at the Cranford Theater. The state that hosted our first imagined contact got the second one too. Different medium. Same dirt.
Written by Adam Nelson, Co-Founder, Socko!
Photography by Marc Brodsky and Adam Nelson
Location: The Cranford Theater, Cranford, New Jersey
On the evening of October 30, 1938, a twenty-three-year-old Orson Welles sat in a CBS Radio studio at 485 Madison Avenue in Manhattan and read into a microphone the words Howard Koch had written for him, an adaptation of H.G. Wells presented as a series of breaking news bulletins from the field. The field was a real place. The field was a working-class farm community in West Windsor Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, called Grover's Mill. The bulletins reported that a cylinder had landed there. That Martians had emerged from it. That the United States Army was being mobilized. That the casualties were mounting. Listeners who had tuned in late, who had missed the disclaimer at the top of the hour, believed every word. Police switchboards lit up. Families packed their cars. Some headed for the hills. A water tower in Grover's Mill was reportedly fired upon by a local resident who mistook it for an alien craft in the dark. A panic that the New York Times the next morning would call a national event was, at its center, a New Jersey event. The aliens, when American mass media first imagined them as real, landed here.
There is a monument at Van Nest Park in West Windsor now. A bronze plaque, a sculpture of a Martian tripod, the date of the broadcast carved in stone. The town never forgot.
Eighty-eight years later, on the evening of Monday, June 8, 2026, in a hundred-year-old movie house on North Avenue West in Cranford, New Jersey, Doreen Sayegh hosted a special advance screening of Disclosure Day, the new Steven Spielberg picture about a global revelation of extraterrestrial life. The picture was shot extensively across the state. The screening was for guests from across the New Jersey film and television industry. The seats were full. The picture played.
The Martians had returned to New Jersey. Different medium. Same dirt.
There is a monument at Van Nest Park in West Windsor now. A bronze plaque, a sculpture of a Martian tripod, the date of the broadcast carved in stone. The town never forgot.
Eighty-eight years later, on the evening of Monday, June 8, 2026, in a hundred-year-old movie house on North Avenue West in Cranford, New Jersey, Doreen Sayegh hosted a special advance screening of Disclosure Day, the new Steven Spielberg picture about a global revelation of extraterrestrial life. The picture was shot extensively across the state. The screening was for guests from across the New Jersey film and television industry. The seats were full. The picture played.
The Martians had returned to New Jersey. Different medium. Same dirt.
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THE HULLABALOO
THE HULLABALOO
Disclosure Day, directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Koepp based on a Spielberg story, opens in theaters across America on Friday, June 12, 2026. Produced by Amblin Entertainment, released by Universal Pictures, it stars Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman Domingo. The plot follows a cybersecurity expert who becomes a whistleblower to reveal what governments and corporations have been keeping quiet about extraterrestrial life, putting him on the run while a meteorologist begins to experience phenomena that connect her to the truth. The themes are familiar Spielberg country: trust, secrecy, awe, the unbearable hope that we might not be alone, the unbearable terror of the same proposition. The world premiere was at Le Grand Rex in Paris on June 2.
Six days later, in a town of twenty thousand people in Union County, that picture played a screen that has been doing this work since November 29, 1926.
The audience erupted.
Six days later, in a town of twenty thousand people in Union County, that picture played a screen that has been doing this work since November 29, 1926.
The audience erupted.
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THE MEGILLAH
THE MEGILLAH
There is a reason a Steven Spielberg picture about aliens got shot all over New Jersey, and the reason has a name. It is the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Tax Credit Program, signed into law in 2018, expanded multiple times since, currently among the most aggressive incentive packages in the country. It is why Disclosure Day filmed extensively here in early 2025.
The Exxon at the corner of Route 202 and Main Road in Montville, a working gas station dressed and lit for nighttime traffic stop sequences. Fosterfields Living Historical Farm in Morris Township, staged with secret government vehicles and the isolated house at the center of the action. The McGinley Square neighborhood in Jersey City for the urban backdrop. The Cape May Seashore Lines railroad through Tuckahoe, Woodbine, and Buena Vista for the train sequences and the large blue-screen setups that an alien-encounter picture requires. The TV station built at NJIT in Newark. A convenience store in Woodbridge that the production descended on. Casting calls in Middlesex County for local background actors willing to drive their own vehicles in scenes.
A picture set in Kansas City, shot all over New Jersey, screened in Cranford. That is not coincidence. That is policy. And it is policy doing exactly what the policy was designed to do.
A century after Thomas Edison built the first commercial movie studio in West Orange, the second time American mass media decided to imagine an alien arrival, the picture that did it filmed here.
The Exxon at the corner of Route 202 and Main Road in Montville, a working gas station dressed and lit for nighttime traffic stop sequences. Fosterfields Living Historical Farm in Morris Township, staged with secret government vehicles and the isolated house at the center of the action. The McGinley Square neighborhood in Jersey City for the urban backdrop. The Cape May Seashore Lines railroad through Tuckahoe, Woodbine, and Buena Vista for the train sequences and the large blue-screen setups that an alien-encounter picture requires. The TV station built at NJIT in Newark. A convenience store in Woodbridge that the production descended on. Casting calls in Middlesex County for local background actors willing to drive their own vehicles in scenes.
A picture set in Kansas City, shot all over New Jersey, screened in Cranford. That is not coincidence. That is policy. And it is policy doing exactly what the policy was designed to do.
A century after Thomas Edison built the first commercial movie studio in West Orange, the second time American mass media decided to imagine an alien arrival, the picture that did it filmed here.
Janice Kovach, Mayor of Clinton & Commissioner, NJMPTC by Adam Nelson
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THE RUCKUS
THE RUCKUS
The Cranford Theater opened its doors on November 29, 1926, with a 1,300-seat house, a stage, an $18,000 Wurlitzer pipe organ, and a silent film called Padlocked. It opened as the New Branford Theatre. Two months later the operators swapped the B's on the marquee for C's and the Cranford Theater was born. Warner Brothers ran it. Cineplex Odeon ran it. Corporate America divided it, multiplexed it, almost killed it. In 1998 the Sayegh family bought it back. In 2019 Doreen and Jesse Sayegh renovated it from the studs out, kept the bones, brought the seats up to code, brought the sound up to specification, kept the soul.
It is the last independently owned, hometown family-run cinema in Union County. And on the night of the Disclosure Day advance screening, it was the room where two industries met.
Doreen Sayegh, President of the Cranford Theater, said it in a statement to SOCKO!:
“One of the things I love most about hosting these screenings is bringing together two industries that are so closely connected. Thanks to New Jersey’s tax incentive program and the incredible work of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, we’re seeing more film and television productions choose New Jersey than ever before. As someone who believes deeply in the power of the theatrical experience, it’s exciting to see these stories created here and then shared with audiences in our movie theaters. It’s also a full-circle moment, because filmmaking began right here in New Jersey, making it only fitting that we celebrate these productions where people come together to experience movies the way they were meant to be seen, on the big screen.”
She put it more plainly the next day.
“Last night was a reminder of why movie theaters matter. The energy in the room was incredible, and hearing the audience erupt into applause at the end of Disclosure Day was a powerful reminder that movies are meant to be experienced together on the big screen.”
That is the case. SOCKO! Editor in Chief Angela Matusik made the same case in our inaugural issue. A movie in a theater is not the same thing as a movie on your couch. It is a different art form. The room is part of the picture. The strangers in the dark are part of the picture. Take them out and you have content. Put them back and you have cinema.
It is the last independently owned, hometown family-run cinema in Union County. And on the night of the Disclosure Day advance screening, it was the room where two industries met.
Doreen Sayegh, President of the Cranford Theater, said it in a statement to SOCKO!:
“One of the things I love most about hosting these screenings is bringing together two industries that are so closely connected. Thanks to New Jersey’s tax incentive program and the incredible work of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, we’re seeing more film and television productions choose New Jersey than ever before. As someone who believes deeply in the power of the theatrical experience, it’s exciting to see these stories created here and then shared with audiences in our movie theaters. It’s also a full-circle moment, because filmmaking began right here in New Jersey, making it only fitting that we celebrate these productions where people come together to experience movies the way they were meant to be seen, on the big screen.”
She put it more plainly the next day.
“Last night was a reminder of why movie theaters matter. The energy in the room was incredible, and hearing the audience erupt into applause at the end of Disclosure Day was a powerful reminder that movies are meant to be experienced together on the big screen.”
That is the case. SOCKO! Editor in Chief Angela Matusik made the same case in our inaugural issue. A movie in a theater is not the same thing as a movie on your couch. It is a different art form. The room is part of the picture. The strangers in the dark are part of the picture. Take them out and you have content. Put them back and you have cinema.
Doreen Sayegh, President of the Cranford Theater
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THE RAZZMATAZZ
THE RAZZMATAZZ
The Cranford Theater turns one hundred years old this November.
One hundred years of films. One hundred years of marriages proposed in the back row. One hundred years of kids on Saturday mornings with their hands sticky from candy and their eyes the size of dinner plates because the screen was bigger than anything they had ever seen. One hundred years of name changes and corporate handoffs and a global pandemic and a ceiling that came down and a community that refused to let the building die.
To mark the centennial, Doreen and her team are bringing back Padlocked, the silent film that opened the theater in November 1926. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival recently restored the print. The renowned silent film accompanist Ben Model will perform his original score live, on a portable 21st-century equivalent of the Mighty Wurlitzer, recreating the sound that audiences would have heard when Padlocked first played the Cranford one hundred years ago.
Same film. Same screen. Same kind of organ filling the same room with the same kind of sound. One hundred years apart. Same theater. Same town.
That is what stewardship of a hometown cinema looks like.
One hundred years of films. One hundred years of marriages proposed in the back row. One hundred years of kids on Saturday mornings with their hands sticky from candy and their eyes the size of dinner plates because the screen was bigger than anything they had ever seen. One hundred years of name changes and corporate handoffs and a global pandemic and a ceiling that came down and a community that refused to let the building die.
To mark the centennial, Doreen and her team are bringing back Padlocked, the silent film that opened the theater in November 1926. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival recently restored the print. The renowned silent film accompanist Ben Model will perform his original score live, on a portable 21st-century equivalent of the Mighty Wurlitzer, recreating the sound that audiences would have heard when Padlocked first played the Cranford one hundred years ago.
Same film. Same screen. Same kind of organ filling the same room with the same kind of sound. One hundred years apart. Same theater. Same town.
That is what stewardship of a hometown cinema looks like.
Recorded Greeting from Michael Uslan, Chairman, NJMPTC by Adam Nelson
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THE TAKE
THE TAKE
The special advance screening at the Cranford Theater on June 8 was the New Jersey send-off, and the room delivered the verdict before the credits had finished rolling. New Jersey film industry professionals, hand-picked by Doreen Sayegh, watched a picture made in their state on a hundred-year-old screen in a town nobody on the coasts talks about. They sat in the dark with strangers and let Steven Spielberg take them somewhere none of them had been. At the end of it they made the only sound a moviegoer can make that means I felt that. They clapped.
That is the box office that matters. That is the audience cinema has been built for since 1895. That is what Jaws did to the country in 1975, what Close Encounters did in 1977, what E.T. did in 1982, what every Spielberg picture has been trying to do ever since. Not entertain. Connect. Put a room full of people who do not know each other into the same emotional state for two hours and let them feel it together.
The picture did it again. In Cranford. In Union County. In New Jersey. In a building that has been doing this work for one hundred years.
That is the box office that matters. That is the audience cinema has been built for since 1895. That is what Jaws did to the country in 1975, what Close Encounters did in 1977, what E.T. did in 1982, what every Spielberg picture has been trying to do ever since. Not entertain. Connect. Put a room full of people who do not know each other into the same emotional state for two hours and let them feel it together.
The picture did it again. In Cranford. In Union County. In New Jersey. In a building that has been doing this work for one hundred years.
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THE STATE OF THE STATE
THE STATE OF THE STATE
SOCKO! is a magazine for the people who make the movies and the people who show them. Both halves of that sentence matter. On Monday night in Cranford, both halves were in one room.
State Senator Declan O'Scanlon, who represents District 13, was in the seats. Dana Lancellotti, Executive Director of the Monmouth-Ocean Development Council, the sixty-year-old nonprofit that has been the economic development engine for both of the counties where Disclosure Day filmed extensively, was in the seats. Brian Papworth, studio operations executive, former Deputy Commissioner of New York's Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, ambassador for the Coalition for American Production, was in the seats. Scott Levy of Eastern Effects and Cameron Zonfrilli of Parlay Studios, two of the men actually building the soundstage infrastructure that is changing the state's production economy, were in the seats. Keith Gordon of Emerald Auto Rentals and the Screen Alliance of New Jersey board. Paul Cosentino of GreenSlate. Dan Basso, area stage manager for Cinelease Studios. Megan Monaghan of Edge Auto Rentals. Les Fincher and Jacki Phipps of the Location Managers Guild. Emiliano Pares of BB Props. Fred Castrovinci, President of Valley National Bank, the kind of regional financial muscle that quietly underwrites this industry's expansion. Jeffrey DeBour of DeBour Media. David Schoner, Senior Advisor at the NJMPTVC. Tom Bergeron of BINJE Magazine. New Jersey Film Commissioner Janice Kovach. Industry professionals from the DGA, IATSE, and the Teamsters. Four mayors from the South Jersey towns that hosted the filming.
And our own SOCKO! partner Diane Raver, Founder of the New Jersey Film Academy, the institution responsible for training the next generation of crew the state's growing soundstage capacity will require. We covered Diane in our inaugural issue. She was in Cranford on Monday night because everyone in the New Jersey film business was in Cranford on Monday night.
That is the picture inside the picture. A Steven Spielberg movie about extraterrestrial disclosure, shot all over the state, screened on a hundred-year-old hometown screen, for a room that contained the senator, the regional development director, the film commissioner, the financier, the stage owners, the equipment houses, the location managers, the union locals, the mayors of the towns that hosted the shoots, and the woman training the crew that will work the next picture. The film business and the theatrical business and the policy apparatus and the workforce pipeline, sitting in the same room together, watching a movie made in their state.
The theatrical business is hard. Streaming has carved out the middle. The blockbusters survive. The art houses survive when they are run by people like Doreen Sayegh. Everything in between is squeezed. The independent hometown cinema, the kind that opened on a main street in 1926 and stayed there, is the most endangered species in the American media landscape. And it is the species that matters most to anyone who believes a movie is a thing that happens between a film and an audience in a room, not between a file and a screen on a lap.
When a Steven Spielberg picture, with every soundstage in California on speed dial, gets routed to the Cranford Theater for a New Jersey advance screening four days before it opens nationwide, that picture is saying something. It is saying the room still matters. It is saying the theater still matters. It is saying the independent operator who put a family fortune on the line to save a building still matters.
The people in that room heard it. They got up and clapped.
State Senator Declan O'Scanlon, who represents District 13, was in the seats. Dana Lancellotti, Executive Director of the Monmouth-Ocean Development Council, the sixty-year-old nonprofit that has been the economic development engine for both of the counties where Disclosure Day filmed extensively, was in the seats. Brian Papworth, studio operations executive, former Deputy Commissioner of New York's Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, ambassador for the Coalition for American Production, was in the seats. Scott Levy of Eastern Effects and Cameron Zonfrilli of Parlay Studios, two of the men actually building the soundstage infrastructure that is changing the state's production economy, were in the seats. Keith Gordon of Emerald Auto Rentals and the Screen Alliance of New Jersey board. Paul Cosentino of GreenSlate. Dan Basso, area stage manager for Cinelease Studios. Megan Monaghan of Edge Auto Rentals. Les Fincher and Jacki Phipps of the Location Managers Guild. Emiliano Pares of BB Props. Fred Castrovinci, President of Valley National Bank, the kind of regional financial muscle that quietly underwrites this industry's expansion. Jeffrey DeBour of DeBour Media. David Schoner, Senior Advisor at the NJMPTVC. Tom Bergeron of BINJE Magazine. New Jersey Film Commissioner Janice Kovach. Industry professionals from the DGA, IATSE, and the Teamsters. Four mayors from the South Jersey towns that hosted the filming.
And our own SOCKO! partner Diane Raver, Founder of the New Jersey Film Academy, the institution responsible for training the next generation of crew the state's growing soundstage capacity will require. We covered Diane in our inaugural issue. She was in Cranford on Monday night because everyone in the New Jersey film business was in Cranford on Monday night.
That is the picture inside the picture. A Steven Spielberg movie about extraterrestrial disclosure, shot all over the state, screened on a hundred-year-old hometown screen, for a room that contained the senator, the regional development director, the film commissioner, the financier, the stage owners, the equipment houses, the location managers, the union locals, the mayors of the towns that hosted the shoots, and the woman training the crew that will work the next picture. The film business and the theatrical business and the policy apparatus and the workforce pipeline, sitting in the same room together, watching a movie made in their state.
The theatrical business is hard. Streaming has carved out the middle. The blockbusters survive. The art houses survive when they are run by people like Doreen Sayegh. Everything in between is squeezed. The independent hometown cinema, the kind that opened on a main street in 1926 and stayed there, is the most endangered species in the American media landscape. And it is the species that matters most to anyone who believes a movie is a thing that happens between a film and an audience in a room, not between a file and a screen on a lap.
When a Steven Spielberg picture, with every soundstage in California on speed dial, gets routed to the Cranford Theater for a New Jersey advance screening four days before it opens nationwide, that picture is saying something. It is saying the room still matters. It is saying the theater still matters. It is saying the independent operator who put a family fortune on the line to save a building still matters.
The people in that room heard it. They got up and clapped.
The Cranford Theater, photography by Adam Nelson
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THE CALL
THE CALL
Disclosure Day opens in theaters across America on June 12. Go see it on a big screen.
If you live in New Jersey, go see it at the Cranford Theater. Twenty-five North Avenue West. Doreen Sayegh and her team will be in the lobby. Tell them you read about it in SOCKO!. Tell them you came because you believe movies are supposed to be seen together. Tell them you will be back in November for Padlocked and the Wurlitzer.
And to every filmmaker and producer and studio executive reading this: the next time you are looking for a theater to send a picture for an advance screening, look east. Look at the small towns. Look at the hundred-year-old screens with the families who never let go. Look at the rooms full of working professionals who clap at the end of a Spielberg movie because they cannot help themselves. They are here. They are running. They are waiting for the next picture.
SOCKO! keeps score in New Jersey. The straight dope on shoots, deals, players, and power moves shaping the state's screen scene.
If you live in New Jersey, go see it at the Cranford Theater. Twenty-five North Avenue West. Doreen Sayegh and her team will be in the lobby. Tell them you read about it in SOCKO!. Tell them you came because you believe movies are supposed to be seen together. Tell them you will be back in November for Padlocked and the Wurlitzer.
And to every filmmaker and producer and studio executive reading this: the next time you are looking for a theater to send a picture for an advance screening, look east. Look at the small towns. Look at the hundred-year-old screens with the families who never let go. Look at the rooms full of working professionals who clap at the end of a Spielberg movie because they cannot help themselves. They are here. They are running. They are waiting for the next picture.
SOCKO! keeps score in New Jersey. The straight dope on shoots, deals, players, and power moves shaping the state's screen scene.
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In 1938, Orson Welles landed an alien at Grover's Mill on the radio and the country lost its mind.
In 2026, Steven Spielberg shot one all over the state and screened it in Cranford and a room full of New Jersey film professionals stood up and clapped.
Eighty-eight years between landings. Same state. Different medium.
The Martians keep choosing New Jersey.
There is probably a reason.
In 2026, Steven Spielberg shot one all over the state and screened it in Cranford and a room full of New Jersey film professionals stood up and clapped.
Eighty-eight years between landings. Same state. Different medium.
The Martians keep choosing New Jersey.
There is probably a reason.
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This story appeared in the inaugural issue of Socko! Magazine [June, 2026]. Click here to subscribe
Adam Nelson has lived at the intersection of performance and American storytelling for more than three decades. As the founder of Workhouse, the New York public relations agency he has run since 1999, he has built an award-winning firm representing filmmakers, artists, festivals, and cultural institutions. A professor at the New Jersey Film Academy, he is currently training a new generation for the state's rapidly expanding production economy. His film Food for Thought, directed by Gary Hanna, was a finalist at the AP'N3 Film Challenge and went on to win Best Silent Film at the 2026 Absurd Film Festival in Milan. Huckleberry Jim, his debut novel, arrives October, 2026. Nelson is co-founder of SOCKO! Magazine
