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Steven Spielberg fought to stop a sequel to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial being made.
The legendary director had already made classics including Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders of the Lost Ark before he moved onto the beloved alien movie, but he insists he did not have enough clout to stop the studio’s plans until E.T. became a huge success, and he used his power to make sure a second movie would never hit the big screen.
Speaking at the TCM Classic Film Festival: New York Pop-Up x 92NY event, Spielberg explained: “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. 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 [intellectual property].”
“I didn’t have that. I got it after E.T. because of its success.”
Universal Pictures
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He added of a potential sequel: “I just did not want to make a sequel. 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.”
“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 …
“I have no intention ever of seeing E.T. anywhere outside of this proscenium.”
He went on to insist he saw ‘E.T.’ as his own because he came up with the concept. The moviemaker added: “It was my story. It wasn’t George Lucas’ story, wasn’t Peter Benchley’s story, it was my story.”
“I had just done a number of very difficult productions, 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.”
At the event, Spielberg shared the stage with his E.T. star Drew Barrymore, who was six at the time of the movie’s release in 1982, and she recalled having a conversation with the director about a potential second movie.
She said: “I remember you saying, ‘We are not making a sequel to E.T.’ I think I was eight. 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.”
