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Night Skies is an unproduced science fiction horror film that was in development in the late 1970s. Steven Spielberg conceived the idea after Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Instead, material developed at the time was used in Poltergeist and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . [1] [2] [3]
Steven Spielberg came up with the idea for Night Skies in the late 1970s when Columbia Pictures wanted a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind . [4] He had no interest in a sequel, but also did not want Columbia to make a sequel without him, as Universal Pictures had done with Jaws . Instead, he came up with a horror film treatment for a Close Encounters follow-up initially titled Watch the Skies (which had also been a working title for Close Encounters). [4] Spielberg based the story on the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, where a Kentucky family claimed that they had been terrorized by gremlin-like aliens. Spielberg had heard the story from UFOlogist J. Allen Hynek while doing research for Close Encounters.
In Spielberg's original treatment for Watch the Skies, eleven malicious extraterrestrial scientists try to communicate with chickens, cows, and other livestock in an attempt to discover which of Earth's animal species are sentient, before turning their unwelcome attentions to a human family and dissecting their farm animals. Fueling Hollywood rumors about the film, NASA announced that Spielberg paid to reserve cargo space for the 1980 inaugural Space Shuttle flight, in order to film the Earth and its Moon from orbit for the film's opening sequence. Spielberg stated that he would produce Watch the Skies but not direct it, as he was under contract to direct his next film for Universal.
Spielberg at first wanted Lawrence Kasdan to flesh out his Watch the Skies treatment into a fully-fledged script, but Kasdan was too busy writing The Empire Strikes Back , so Spielberg turned to John Sayles (who had written Joe Dante's Roger Corman-produced Jaws spoof Piranha , which Spielberg had loved). Watch the Skies was renamed Night Skies because someone owned the rights to the words "watch the skies" (which was the last line in The Thing from Another World ). Some called Night Skies " Straw Dogs with aliens", but Sayles says his inspiration was the 1939 western film Drums Along the Mohawk . Sayles even named one of the aliens Scar (a character who was said to be "a real badass") after a Comanche Indian badguy in the John Wayne film The Searchers . Spielberg suggested that Tobe Hooper, best known for directing and co-writing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , direct the film. The film was scheduled to begin shooting after Spielberg returned from filming Raiders of the Lost Ark . Spielberg chose make-up and special effects master Rick Baker (who at the time was also working on John Landis's An American Werewolf in London ) to design and create the alien creatures.
Rick Baker built a working prototype of the lead alien that cost $70,000 and thrilled Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy when they saw a videotape of it while filming Raiders of the Lost Ark in London. In mid-1980, Sayles delivered his first (and, in the end, only) draft of the screenplay, which featured five aliens (cut down from the original eleven) including the aforementioned Scar, Squirt, and Buddy, who was kind and befriended the human family's autistic son. Sayles's script opened with Scar (who was described in the script as having a beak-like mouth and eyes like a grasshopper's) killing farm animals by touching them with a long bony finger which gave off an eerie light, and ended with Buddy, marooned on Earth by his mean-spirited peers, cowering under the shadow of an approaching hawk. Although there were some differences over the new concept, Spielberg and Sayles parted amicably and the film project continued on. [5]
While Baker worked on the aliens, Spielberg was having second thoughts about Night Skies. "I might have taken leave of my senses. Throughout [the production of] Raiders, I was in between killing Nazis and blowing up flying wings and having Harrison Ford in all this high serialized adventure, I was sitting there in the middle of Tunisia, scratching my head and saying, 'I've got to get back to the tranquillity, or at least the spirituality, of Close Encounters.'" While on the set of Raiders, Spielberg read the Night Skies script to Melissa Mathison (who was there to see her then-boyfriend and future husband Harrison Ford) and she cried after hearing it because "the idea of an alien creature who was benevolent, tender, emotional and sweet... and the idea of the creature's striking up a relationship with a child who came from a broken home was very affecting". [5]
When Spielberg came back from Tunisia and Hawaii (where the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was filmed), he eagerly closed the door on Night Skies and began planning the film Mathison had dubbed ET and Me, released to massive success 18 months later as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . Rick Baker, who had spent $700,000 on unused Night Skies designs, models and animatronics, had a huge fight with Spielberg, which led to Carlo Rambaldi (who had previously done alien creature designs for Close Encounters) doing creature designs for E.T.. John P. Veitch (then-president of Columbia's worldwide productions) and Frank Price (then president of Columbia) were also unhappy with the emergence of E.T. and did not want to make "a wimpy Walt Disney movie". In February 1981 (six months after Columbia's desire for a Close Encounters follow-up had been fulfilled by Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition), Columbia put the Night Skies/E.T. project in turnaround. Sid Sheinberg (Spielberg's long-time friend and then-president of MCA, the then-parent company of Universal Studios) bought the Night Skies/E.T. project from Columbia, repaying them the $1 million that had been used thus far to develop the project and making a deal in which Columbia would retain 5% of the film's net profits. (Veitch later said that "I think that year we made more on that picture than we did on any of our films.") The horror elements of Night Skies influenced Poltergeist , directed by Tobe Hooper from a story by Spielberg. The film features a suburban family terrorized by paranormal forces. [6]
Although Night Skies never saw the light of day, it helped inspire not only E.T. and Poltergeist but also Spielberg and Mathison's proposed E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears (to have featured malicious, animal-mutilating cousins of E.T.); Gremlins (featuring one kind member of a species of otherwise mean-spirited creatures, as well as a marquee adverting Watch the Skies on a movie theater, co-billed with A Boy's Life, the working title for E.T.); and Spielberg's War of the Worlds adaptation. [7]
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott, a boy who befriends an extraterrestrial, dubbed E.T., who is left behind on Earth. Along with his friends and family, Elliott must find a way to help E.T. find his way home. The film stars Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore.
Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, who, with the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter, hunts a man-eating great white shark that attacks beachgoers at a summer resort town. Murray Hamilton plays the mayor, and Lorraine Gary portrays Brody's wife. The screenplay is credited to Benchley, who wrote the first drafts, and actor-writer Carl Gottlieb, who rewrote the script during principal photography.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 American science fiction drama film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut. It is the story of Roy Neary, an everyday blue-collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with a UFO.
Willard Tobe Hooper was an American filmmaker, best known for his work in the horror genre. The British Film Institute cited Hooper as one of the most influential horror filmmakers of all time.
War of the Worlds is a 2005 American science fiction action thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, based on H. G. Wells' 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise stars in the main role alongside Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, and Tim Robbins, with narration by Morgan Freeman. It follows an American dock worker who must look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he struggles to protect them and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade Earth and devastate cities with giant war machines.
Heather Michele O'Rourke was an American child actress. She had her breakthrough starring as Carol Anne Freeling in the supernatural horror film Poltergeist (1982), which received critical acclaim and established her as an influential figure in the genre. She went on to reprise the role in Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) and Poltergeist III (1988), the last of which was released posthumously.
Melissa Marie Mathison was an American film and television screenwriter and an activist for the Tibetan independence movement. She was best known for writing the screenplays for the films The Black Stallion (1979) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the latter of which earned her the Saturn Award for Best Writing and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
The Howling is a 1981 American horror film directed and edited by Joe Dante. Written by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless, based on the novel of the same name by Gary Brandner, the film follows a news anchor who, following a traumatic encounter with a serial killer, visits a resort secretly inhabited by werewolves. The cast includes Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Christopher Stone, Belinda Balaski, Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, Slim Pickens, and Elisabeth Brooks.
The history of science fiction films parallels that of the motion picture industry as a whole, although it took several decades before the genre was taken seriously. Since the 1960s, major science fiction films have succeeded in pulling in large audience shares, and films of this genre have become a regular staple of the film industry. Science fiction films have led the way in special effects technology, and have also been used as a vehicle for social commentary.
Carlo Rambaldi was an Italian special effects artist, winner of three Oscars: one Special Achievement Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1977 for the 1976 version of King Kong and two Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects in 1980 and 1983 for, respectively, Alien (1979) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). He is most famous for his work in those two last mentioned films, that is for the mechanical head-effects for the creature in Alien and the design of the title character of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Steven Spielberg is an American director, writer, and producer. He is considered one of the founding pioneers of the New Hollywood era, as well as one of the most popular directors and producers in film history. He is also one of the co-founders of Amblin Entertainment, DreamWorks Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation.
The Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter was a claimed close encounter with extraterrestrial beings in 1955 near the communities of Kelly and Hopkinsville in Christian County, Kentucky, United States. UFOlogists regard it as one of the most significant and well-documented cases in the history of UFO incidents, while skeptics say the reports were due to "the effects of excitement" and misidentification of natural phenomena such as meteors and owls. The United States Air Force classified the alleged incident as a hoax in the Project Blue Book files.
Poltergeist is a 1982 American supernatural horror film directed by Tobe Hooper and written by Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais and Mark Victor from a story by Spielberg. It stars JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson and Beatrice Straight, and was produced by Spielberg and Frank Marshall. The film focuses on a suburban family whose home is invaded by malevolent ghosts that abduct their youngest daughter.
Poltergeist II: The Other Side is a 1986 American supernatural horror film directed by Brian Gibson. JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Oliver Robins, Heather O'Rourke and Zelda Rubinstein reprised their roles from the first film. New cast members include Will Sampson, Julian Beck and Geraldine Fitzgerald. The second entry in the Poltergeist film series and a direct sequel to Poltergeist (1982), it follows the Freeling family who again finds themselves under attack from the supernatural forces led by "the Beast", revealed to be the spirit of an insane preacher who led an apocalyptic cult during the 19th century, attempting to claim their daughter. In their efforts to save their daughter, the family finds help in a Native American shaman.
Firelight is a 1964 American science fiction adventure film written and directed by Steven Spielberg at the age of 17. Made on a budget of $500, the film was shown at a local cinema and generated a profit of $1. "I counted the receipts that night", Spielberg has recalled, "And we charged a dollar a ticket. Five hundred people came to the movie and I think somebody probably paid two dollars, because we made one dollar profit that night, and that was it."
The Alien was an unproduced Indian-American science fiction film in development in the late 1960s which was eventually cancelled. It was to be directed by Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray and co-produced by Columbia Pictures. The script was written by Ray in 1967, loosely based on Bankubabur Bandhu, a Bengali science fiction story he had written in 1962 for Sandesh, the Ray family magazine, which gained popularity among Bengalis in the early 1960s. Bankubabur Bandhu was eventually adapted into a television film by Satyajit Ray's son Sandip Ray, and a play by the theatre group Swapnasandhani Kaushik Sen, in 2006.
E.T. Adventure is a dark ride located at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando, Florida, United States. Primarily designed in-house by Universal Creative in collaboration with Steven Spielberg, the ride first opened to the public at Universal Studios Florida in 1990. Similar installations of the ride opened at Universal Studios Hollywood in 1991 and Universal Studios Japan in 2001, both of which have since been removed.
The following is a list of unproduced Steven Spielberg projects in roughly chronological order. During his long career, American film director Steven Spielberg has worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these projects fell in "development hell" or were officially canceled, some were turned over to other production teams, and still others never made it past the speculative stage.
E.T. is a fictional character and the titular extraterrestrial from Steven Spielberg's 1982 film of the same name. Created by Spielberg and the film's screenwriter Melissa Mathison, E.T. serves as the main protagonist in the film itself, in which he seeks the help of a boy named Elliott who, along with his friends and family, find a way to help E.T. return home. Since the film's release, the character has been and continues to be widely assessed as one of the greatest science fiction film characters of all time and is considered an icon of the genre. The character has also appeared in all of its other media, including books, video games, a theme park attraction and a short film sequel.
The following is a list of unproduced Tobe Hooper projects in roughly chronological order. Over the course of his career, American film director Tobe Hooper had worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these projects fell into "development hell" or were officially cancelled, while others were taken over and completed by other filmmakers.
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