E.T. Was Initially A Horror Film

[PunkNinja]

'E.T.' Was Initially A Horror Film And Here Are The Original Designs To Prove It

Steven Spielberg’s classic “E.T.” is heralded as one of the director’s best works today. It’s also one of the highest-grossing.

However, you may not realize the film about a friendly extraterrestrial was originally envisioned as a horror movie that was supposed to be a sequel to Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

The movie, then referred to as “Night Skies,” was supposed to feature aliens “who could kill each other” using the tips of their fingers, according to Time. There was also a good alien in the group, too, named Buddy who more or less reflected E.T.

Spielberg ultimately deemed the idea too dark and we ended up with the film we know today.

Since the idea for “Night Skies” was tossed around, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there were some early ideas of how the aliens should look.

Special effects artist Rick Baker recently shared some of his original concept art and designs for the aliens from "E.T." and "Night Skies" on Twitter, and boy are they a lot different from the alien we grew up with.

First, here’s the cuddly E.T. we know:

- Kirsten Acuna (of Business Insider) finance.yahoo.com

Rick Baker shared of a much different, angrier alien:

"I was so excited to be working on this project, to be able to design different alien characters of the same race."

"... but take off the top of the head and there's a familiar face underneath."
— Rick Baker


— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker)
As requested The Night Skies alien. Not finished, no eyes. Cover the top of his head and tell me who he looks like.

— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker)
He does look like Edward G and the others.But painting out the top of the head, adding eyes,and small tweaks.ET"S dad

— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker)
Happy days sculpting the prototype arms for the Night Skies alien back in 1980

— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker)
I was so excited to be working on this project,to be able to design different alien characters of the same race.

— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker)
Here was a quick clay sketch that I did in 1980 for one of the nicer younger NIGHT Skies aliens.

— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker)
Unhappy days,film shut down. I wanted to change the body of the ET,the mantis like arm placement just didn't work imo.

Here's the design of the full alien which had a preying mantis-like arm.

 

[bigrob]

I was reading this the other day on denofgeek. Superb article with loads of insights behind CEOT3K and E.T. Found it very interesting about the concept of Dark Skies being split I to two different story's namely being Poltergiest and Gremlins

 

[Sir Hilary Bray]

Speaking of Gremlins, wasn't that also going to be more horror like? I remember hearing about a scene, in which the mother goes upstairs to inspect all the racket, and then next scene shows her head rolling down the stairs??


Excellent pictures by the way! The unseen aspects of films has always interested me, whether it's concepts, workprints, deleted scenes........it's all right up my street!