3. E.T Goes Bonkers
At the end of the 1970s and following the phenomenal success of Close Encounters of The Third Kind, Spielberg was approached by Columbia Pictures to film a sequel. Because them studios loves a cash cow, yes they do. Not really wanting to make a direct follow up to the movie, Spielberg instead decided to dream up an intense sci-fi horror flick that pitted a rural farming family against a pack of malicious aliens. Why? Because up yours the spirituality and tranquillity of Close Encounters that's why! The project, entitled "Night Skies", got as far as a draft script by John Sayles and a $70,000 animatronic of the lead alien constructed by Rick Baker. During the filming of Raiders of The Lost Ark (we assume) Spielberg ran out of cocaine and thus decided that a crazy "Straw Dogs with aliens" style movie wasn't exactly the kind of family friendly fodder he wanted to put out. Thus, the project was scrapped. But here's where things get interesting. Over the years a plethora of films that Spielberg has been directly and indirectly involved with have taken from or been influenced by Night Skies. For example... The aliens had long bony fingers with glowing lights at the end. One of them is also friendly and becomes trapped on earth....sound familiar? The key concept of a family terrorized by forces beyond their understanding was cannibalized and remodelled for Poltergeist. Night Skies saw one innocent and friendly member of a strange species teaming up with humans to overcome his malicious and evil cohorts. One word for you there, Gremlins. Most abhorrent of all though? M. Night Shyamalan aliens terrorizing a rural farming family movie picture Signs...which pretty much directly rips off Night Skies whole concept. But stuff all these together and you can't help but wonder what the movie in its original form would have wound up looking like.