Pros And Cons Of Spielberg

Melissa Mathison wrote the screenplay, but the essence of the story for E.T. actually came from several inspirations of Spielberg. After the tremendous popularity and success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (it was nominated it for eight Academy Awards and winning two), the studio (Columbia Pictures) urged Spielberg to make a sequel, but he was reluctant to do so at the time. He eventually wrote a treatment for a planned sequel and commissioned screenwriter John Thomas Sayles to complete a script that later became known as Night Skies, a science fiction horror film that was based on “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” (Wikipedia).

The project Night Skies never got off the ground, however, Spielberg wanted to make a more “friendlier” version of meeting non-hostile aliens, he decided to combined some elements from Night Skies and from his own childhood past, Spielberg is quote as saying, “I had always really wanted to tell the story of a disenfranchised and lonely boy in a relationship with siblings and to tell a story about the divorce of my parents, the story of a special friend who rescues a young boy from the sadness of a
Upon its release, the film E.T. had such great appeal and had widely recognizable images and phrase like “E.T. phone home” that influenced popular culture, even the “image of young Elliott and his newfound space alien friend, silhouetted as tiny hooded figures against a luminous full moon, has become iconic, a symbol of inspiration, the importance of friendship and home, and the magic of cinema itself. (It is also the logo of Amblin Entertainment, Spielberg’s production company)” (Schneider