{"id":51678,"date":"2026-11-14T19:35:19","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T18:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/14\/before-directing-the-biggest-success-of-his-career-steven-spielberg-almost-made-an-alien-horror-movie-instead\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T19:35:19","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T18:35:19","slug":"before-directing-the-biggest-success-of-his-career-steven-spielberg-almost-made-an-alien-horror-movie-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/14\/before-directing-the-biggest-success-of-his-career-steven-spielberg-almost-made-an-alien-horror-movie-instead\/","title":{"rendered":"Before Directing the Biggest Success of His Career, Steven Spielberg Almost Made an Alien Horror Movie Instead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-cy=\"paragraph\">In the late 1970s\/early 1980s, Steven Spielberg was developing a movie that ultimately would never get made. And yet, from a different perspective, it actually <em>would <\/em>get made\u2026 as a bunch of other, quite famous films. We\u2019re talking Gremlins. We\u2019re talking Poltergeist. And we\u2019re talking <a data-cy=\"styled-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ign.com\/movies\/et-the-extra-terrestrial\">E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\">\u201cIt was a dream team of people working on this thing. It was going to be a horror movie about these evil aliens, or mischievous aliens, that come to this rural farmstead and really mess with this family \u2013 they really fuck with this family,\u201d explains movie journalist and author Max Evry, who just released a book about the film called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1948221454?th=1\" data-cy=\"styled-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stranded on Earth: How Night Skies Became E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\">Dream team is putting it lightly, as Night Skies had Spielberg producing, John Sayles scripting, production illustrator Ron Cobb expected to make his directorial debut, and Rick Baker designing the aliens. And of course, Kathleen Kennedy was also onboard, as she was working for Spielberg at this point in her career and would soon get her first full producer credit on E.T.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\">I recently spoke to Evry,<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"echo_read_more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/steven-spielberg-night-skies-et-almost-made-an-alien-horror-movie-instead\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0More Info >>><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the late 1970s\/early 1980s, Steven Spielberg was developing a movie that ultimately would never get made. And yet, from a different perspective, it actually would get made\u2026 as a bunch of other, quite famous films. We\u2019re talking Gremlins. We\u2019re talking Poltergeist. And we\u2019re talking E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . \u201cIt was a dream team of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":51679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","wpai_meta_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-51678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-moviestv","tag-mixtv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixtv1.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}