NIGHT SKIES Unproduced SPIELBERG Script JOHN SAYLES + RON COBB Rick Baker FX

Description

Creature Features, your one-stop shop for the finest in film memorabilia, offers another from our library of rare and unproduced screenplays!
We're offering a copy of the elusive screenplay from Steven Spielberg's NIGHT SKIES, the
notorious, much-discussed unproduced feature film project from the early 1980's that eventually morphed into "E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL."
Origins
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. 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
). 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 on the 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.
John Sayles and Rick Baker
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 ,000 and thrilled Spielberg and
Kathleen Kennedy
when they saw a videotape of it while filming
Raiders
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.
Origin of E.T.
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".
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
, but would in only a year and half be known to audiences all over the world as
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
. Rick Baker, who had spent 0,000 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 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.")
Legacy
Although
Night Skies
as a film would never reach production status, it helped inspire not only
E.T.
, but also
Poltergeist
(which had a family terrorized by paranormal forces and Spielberg hired Tobe Hooper to direct), Spielberg and Mathison's proposed
E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears
(which had malicious, animal-mutilating cousins of E.T.),
Gremlins
(which had one innocent and kind member of a species of otherwise mean-spirited creatures as well as being able to see
Watch the Skies
being advertised on a movie theater
marquee
, co-billed with
A Boy's Life
, the working title for
E.T.
),
Critters
(which had a farm family terrorized by cattle-mutilating aliens),
Signs
, and Spielberg's
War of the Worlds
adaptation. Sayles, meanwhile, riffed on
E.T.'
s success with 1984's
The Brother from Another Planet
, a socio-political take on the story of a benevolent alien stranded on Earth.
This 99-page undated draft is credited exclusively to John Sayles and contains two pages of rough floor-plans of the proposed farm layout. (Alien photos are for reference and not included.)
Condition on this reproduction is MINT.
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