
Had there been an “E.T” sequel, Steven Spielberg would have had the titular alien not just phone home, but go home. In the end, Spielberg had no desire to direct a follow-up to his iconic 1982 film — and he had just enough sway to put his foot down.
The auteur said during the TCM Classic Film Festival: New York Pop-Up x 92NY (via The Hollywood Reporter) that “E.T.” was a surprise hit.
“There was no pressure. I had low expectations,” Spielberg said. “I thought I was making a really young people’s movie. I didn’t expect any box office, I simply wanted to get this thing through my system and out into my world. It didn’t have to be in your world; I just wanted to make the movie for me.”
Naturally, the studio wanted more. Though Spielberg says he “just did not want to make a sequel,” he did consider what one would look like.
“I flirted with it for a little bit — just a little bit to see if I [could] think of a story — and the only thing I could think about was a book that was written by somebody that wrote the book for it called ‘The Green Planet,’ which was all going to take place at E.T.’s home,” he said. “We were all going to be able to go to E.T.’s home and see how E.T. lived. But it was better as a novel than I think it would have been as a film.”
“E.T.” won four Oscars and became the first film to earn more than $300 million at the U.S. box office. The global hit was highly personal to Spielberg.
“It was my story,” he said. “It wasn’t George Lucas’s story, wasn’t Peter Benchley’s story, it was my story. I had just done a number of very difficult productions [with ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ as the most recent], and I had not intended this to be a hard movie to make, but it was something that came to my heart. It was something that I thought up.”
And it was something that he “fought” to keep contained to just one film.
“That was a real hard-fought victory because I didn’t have any rights. Before ‘E.T.,’ I had some rights, but I didn’t have a lot of rights,” he said. “I kind of didn’t have what we call ‘the freeze,’ where you can stop the studio from making a sequel because you control the freeze on sequels, remakes, and other ancillary uses of the IP. I didn’t have that. I got it after ‘E.T.’ because of its success.”
“E.T.” star Drew Barrymore, who was in conversation with Spielberg at the event, recalled being told there would be no “E.T. 2” at the time.
“I remember you saying, ‘We are not making a sequel to “E.T.”‘ I think I was eight,” Barrymore said. “I remember being like, ‘OK, that’s a bummer, but I totally get it.’ I thought it was a smart choice. I very much understand it. Where do we go from here? They’re just going to compare it to the first and leave something that’s perfect alone in isolation open to scrutiny. It made so much sense.”
She added that “E.T.” is the film she is most proud of.
“I think ‘E.T.,’ for me, is the one I’m the most proud of because it’s the one that changed my life. There’s no question about that,” Barrymore said. “Everything in my life is about how I got believed in by one human being, and that is the life that I try to honor every day.”
SOURCE: IndieWire