Night Skies - Legacy

Legacy

Although Night Skies as a film would never reach production status, it helped inspire not only E.T., but also Poltergeist (which had a family terrorized by paranormal forces and Spielberg hired Tobe Hooper to direct), Spielberg and Mathison's proposed E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears (which had malicious, animal-mutilating cousins of E.T.), Gremlins (which had one innocent and kind member of a species of otherwise mean-spirited creatures as well as being able to see Night Skies being advertised in a movie theater), Critters (which had a farm family terrorized by cattle-mutilating aliens), Signs, and Spielberg's War of the Worlds adaptation. Sayles, meanwhile, riffed on E.T.'s success with 1984's The Brother from Another Planet, a socio-political take on the story of a benevolent alien stranded on Earth.