In the late 1970s, Steven Spielberg set out to make a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that he initially intended to call Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. The concept eventually evolved into a script entitled Night Skies, written by Piranha scribe John Sayles. Based in part on a famous UFO story from 1955, the unfilmed screenplay revolves around a group of malevolent extraterrestrials who terrorize a family living in a remote farmhouse. It also leans heavily into horror with some darkly comedic undertones, differing significantly from the feel of Close Encounters.An early scene in the script describes an animal mutilation perpetrated by the aliens like so: “A dead cow lies on its side on the grass. The skin on its neck, from shoulders to chin, has been skillfully removed, leaving the membrane and nerves beneath intact.” It goes on to say, “A perfect circle of skin about the circumference of a grapefruit has been removed from its forehead. Its genitals have been sliced out.” Steven Spielberg’s Scrapped ‘Close Encounters’ Sequel Was Basically an Alien Horror FilmA little bit later, the youngest of the aliens befriends an autistic child, and it was that aspect of the story that would end up being reworked into 1982’s E.T. the Extraterrestrial. While on the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg showed Melissa Matheson the Night Skies screenplay, and Matheson was touched by the relationship between the boy and the alien. She and Spielberg agreed that he should focus more on that part moving forward. The revamped film came together quickly from there, with Matheson taking over the writing.But that wasn’t the only thing proposed during that time that Spielberg made use of. Legendary makeup effects artist Rick Baker spent close to a million dollars designing the menacing aliens for Night Skies, and one of his ideas clearly became the basis for E.T.’s titular extraterrestrial. On top of that, a couple other Spielberg-produced films appear to have recycled the family-being-terrorized elements from the original treatment. Gremlins and Poltergeist, for example, seemingly replaced the aliens from Night Skies with mogwais and ghosts, respectively.The post The Unmade Spielberg Movie That Somehow Became ‘E.T.,’ ‘Gremlins,’ and ‘Poltergeist’ appeared first on VICE.