A New Book Promises to Tell the Story of Steven Spielberg’s Abandoned Alien Horror Movie That Morphed Into E.T.

Have you read Max Evry's A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch’s Dune? It's the kind of making-of movie book that's hard to come by these days - not just definitive, but also honest in a way that the Hollywood marketing machine does its best to smother whenever possible. Well, Evry (an occassional contributor to IGN) is back with another look at cinema of the past: Stranded on Earth: How Night Skies Became E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

According to a press release from 1984 Publishing, Stranded on Earth, which hits this October, traces "the remarkable journey from Steven Spielberg’s abandoned alien horror project Night Skies to the creation of E.T. ... Part film history and part investigative chronicle, Stranded on Earth follows Spielberg’s fascination with UFOs and extraterrestrial storytelling from his teenage feature Firelight in the 1960s through the success of 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The book then dives into the ambitious — and ultimately doomed — production of Night Skies, a dark science-fiction horror film that gradually evolved into the heartfelt classic E.T."

The publisher promises that Evry has done extensive research on the topic and conducted new interviews with many Spielberg-adjacent folks, which sounds about right based on the extensive work the author did for A Masterpiece in Disarray. Said Evry: "As with my book on David Lynch’s Dune, the deeper I dug, the bigger — and wilder — the story became."

The cover of Stranded on Earth was created by artist Ian Fried (aka DarkMatter). He also contribued interior illustrations, like the one pictured above.

More from the release: "The book also examines how the DNA of the abandoned Night Skies project echoed throughout Hollywood, influencing genre-defining works such as Poltergeist and Gremlins while helping shape the explosion of sci-fi horror and fantasy storytelling throughout the 1980s and beyond."

It would seem that 2026 is a year for Spielberg aliens. The iconic filmmaker also has his new picture Disclosure Day coming out on June 12. That film tells the story of what happens when humanity finally learns that aliens are real.

You can pre-order Stranded on Earth: How Night Skies Became E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at the link now.

Talk to Scott Collura @scottcollura.bsky.social, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!