{
  "id": 19887321,
  "title": "Before Directing the Biggest Success of His Career, Steven Spielberg Almost Made an Alien Horror Movie Instead",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/before-directing-the-biggest-success-of-his-career-steven-spielberg",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-11-13T23:06:23.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "IGN",
    "slug": "ign",
    "url": "https://www.ign.com/articles/steven-spielberg-night-skies-et-almost-made-an-alien-horror-movie-instead"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Steven Spielberg was developing an alien horror movie titled Night Skies. The film, which had a dream team of talent including Spielberg, John Sayles, Ron Cobb, Rick Baker, and Kathleen Kennedy, was meant to be a horror movie about mischievous aliens invading a rural farmstead and wreaking havoc on a family. Notable contributors to the project included Ron Cobb, who was set to make his directorial debut, and Rick Baker, who would later design the iconic E.T. creatures. Kathleen Kennedy, working for Spielberg at the time, would go on to produce E.T. The project, which had a budget of nearly a million dollars, was being heavily developed but was eventually shelved, leaving its fate in the hands of other successful films like Gremlins and Poltergeist.",
  "summary": "Before directing E.T., Steven Spielberg almost made an alien horror movie called Night Skies.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}