10 Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made
2. Night Skies
One of the most consistently successful directors in film history is the inimitable Steven Spielberg, but early in his career, he wasn't afforded the same allowances he enjoys today. When Close Encounters of the Third Kind revealed him to be a man of unprecedented talent, Columbia Pictures saw dollar signs and asked for a sequel.
Not wanting to see a bad sequel made without his input, which is what happened with Universal and Jaws, Spielberg reluctantly agreed. In the late 1970s, he began working on a new project titled Watch the Skies.
The premise of the film was set to revolve around a group of aliens that terrorized a midwestern farm. At first, the film was titled Watch the Skies, and he based it on the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, which he discovered while researching for Close Encounters, and it eventually was retitled to Night Skies.
The project moved into several phases of development, and it even went so far as to snag legendary FX artist Rick Baker, who built a working prototype of the alien for $70,000 (pictured).
While that was happening, Spielburg began to have second thoughts, and after hundreds of thousands of dollars had been paid out in development, the movie came to an end.
Ultimately, a friend of Spielberg's at MCA bought the project, which went on to inspire E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Poltergeist, yet Dark Skies never came to fruition.