12 Things You Probably Never Knew About E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

Allegations of plagiarism have been thrown at Spielberg on a number occasions throughout his career, though the director’s most outspoken accuser has been Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Ray wrote a script in 1967 that he called The Alien, a story about a spaceship that lands in a pond in the middle of rural Bengal that bears a number of resemblances to E.T.

After local villagers begin worshipping the ship as a temple, the titular alien establishes contact with a young boy in the village via his dreams. The pair play a number of pranks on the unsuspecting villagers and form a bond before the alien has to leave Earth and head home. Certain similarities are obvious, though Ray went as far as saying that E.T. would not have been possible if he hadn’t made his script readily available throughout America.

Spielberg’s response to the allegations was that he was nothing but a kid in high school when Ray’s script was circulating Hollywood, though these claims were called into question when it was pointed out that Spielberg had graduated in 1965 and began his career as a director in Hollywood in 1969, the exact time that Ray’s screenplay was doing the rounds. The plot thickens.