Night Skies

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For other uses, see Night Skies (disambiguation).

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, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial[1][2][3] and Gremlins
.

Origins

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

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.

John Sayles and Rick Baker

Spielberg at first wanted

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

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]

Origin of E.T. and Poltergeist

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

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]

Legacy

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

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]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Grefrath, Richard W. "Review: The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made." Library Journal, University of Nevada Library, Reno, Nevada, 2002.
  2. ^ "The Fruitful Failure of Steven Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind Sequel". Film School Rejects. August 24, 2020.
  3. ^ "Spielberg's Unmade 189s Horror Movie Ended Up Creating 2 Iconic Films Everyone Knows Today". Screen Rant. July 14, 2023.
  4. ^ a b Sinyard 1987, p. 77.
  5. ^ a b Sinyard 1987, p. 78.
  6. ^ "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Poltergeist started as one movie". SyFy Wire. June 7, 2022.
  7. ^ "The Real Story Behind Those Rick Baker 'Night Skies' Photos". IndieWire. June 5, 2014.

Bibliography

External links

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