'E.T.' Was Initially A Horror Film And Here Are The Original Designs To Prove It

Kirsten AcunaMay 31, 2014, 01:57 IST

Universal

Steven Spielberg's classic "E.T." is heralded as one of the director's best works today. It's also one of the highest-grossing. However, you may not realize the film about a friendly extraterrestrial was originally envisioned as a horror movie that was supposed to be a sequel to Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." The movie, then referred to as "Night Skies," was supposed to feature aliens "who could kill each other" using the tips of their fingers, according to Time. There was also a good alien in the group, too, named Buddy who more or less reflected E.T. Spielberg ultimately deemed the idea too dark and we ended up with the film we know today. Since the idea for "Night Skies" was tossed around, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there were some early ideas of how the aliens should look. Special effects artist Rick Baker recently shared some of his original concept art and designs for the aliens from "E.T." and "Night Skies" on Twitter, and boy are they a lot different from the alien we grew up with. First, here's the cuddly E.T. we know:

Universal

Below are some of the images Baker shared of a much different, angrier alien. This alien may look kind of unrecognizable now ...

... but take off the top of the head and there's a familiar face underneath.

Here's the design of the full alien which had a preying mantis-like arm.

An entire clan of extraterrestrials!

@TheRickBaker/TwitterBaker: "I was so excited to be working on this project, to be able to design different alien characters of the same race."

This one's a bit cuter.

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'E.T.' Was Initially A Horror Film And Here Are The Original Designs To Prove It