After the smash success of 1977’s ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind’, Columbia Pictures immediately wanted a sequel. Director Steven Spielberg offered to develop the second movie, while secretly planning to NOT deliver an actual follow-up. Instead, he came up with a plot that involved a group of aliens terrorizing a family in their rural farm house. Spielberg brought in screenwriter John Sayles to embellish the script and makeup effects expert Rick Baker to design the aliens. Rather than simply dubbing the new film ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind 2’ (or ‘Close Encounters Of The Fourth Kind’?), the new script was given the title ‘Watch The Skies’ and later ‘Night Skies’. The plot was loosely based on a real event known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter.
The evil leader of the aliens was to be named Scar and he would use his glowing fingers to dissect farm animals. Scar would be assisted by two additional aliens Hoodoo and Klud. There would also be two additional aliens, Squirt who would serve as comic relief and Buddy who would befriend the young autistic child in the movie. At the end, Buddy and Scar would do battle as Scar planned to dissect the boy as he had the farm animals.
Ultimately, with the input of Melissa Mathison, a screenwriter and the then-girlfriend of Harrison Ford, Spielberg decided to cut out the evil aliens and focus on Buddy the good alien. This idea eventually evolved into ‘E.T. The Extraterrestrial’ one of the signature movies of the 80s.
Baker was apparently so upset that Spielberg pulled the plug on ‘Night Skies’ and that all his hard work was bring discarded that he refused to work with the director on ‘E.T.’. Carlos Rambaldi, who had worked on ‘Close Encounters’, was instead brought in for that project.
But thanks to Baker’s new Twitter account, fans can finally see what he’d cooked up for this aborted film and the work that he put into designing these alien beings, getting a never before seen glimpse at movie history.
Check it out below:
I was so excited to be working on this project,to be able to design different alien characters of the same race. pic.twitter.com/3uxwikTHRB
— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 27, 2014
As requested The Night Skies alien. Not finished, no eyes. Cover the top of his head and tell me who he looks like. pic.twitter.com/r3PxK1T98A
— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 22, 2014
He does look like Edward G and the others.But painting out the top of the head, adding eyes,and small tweaks.ET”S dad pic.twitter.com/XOdbSNDmAd
— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 23, 2014
Here was a quick clay sketch that I did in 1980 for one of the nicer younger NIGHT Skies aliens pic.twitter.com/NKHVXrGNLu
— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 23, 2014
Happy days sculpting the prototype arms for the Night Skies alien back in 1980 pic.twitter.com/x2z2ftL1ll
— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 24, 2014
Unhappy days,film shut down. I wanted to change the body of the ET,the mantis like arm placement just didn’t work imo pic.twitter.com/mNMEAP9yem
— Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 26, 2014
So what do you think? Would you have like to have seen ‘Night Skies’ on the big screen?
Source: Comic Book Movie and Flicker