Is An E.T. Sequel Ever Happening? The OG Film’s Stars Have Spoken Out About It

You don’t become the king of Hollywood without leaving your options open, no matter how artistically distasteful they may be, so you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison worked up a treatment for a sequel titled “E.T. Nocturnal Fears.” You may, however, be shocked that the duo who’d made the kindest, sweetest blockbuster of all time wanted to take the potential franchise in a wildly dark direction.

The dearly missed BirthMoviesDeath wrote up the treatment several years ago, and, well, it’s a doozy. The plot centered on a carnivorous offshoot of E.T.’s species following the coordinates beamed out into the cosmos by the jury-rigged Speak & Spell, and luring Elliott, Gertie, and older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) into the woods. The trio believes they’re to be reunited with E.T., but are instead captured and tortured by these unfriendly aliens, who are, for whatever reason, hot to track down their long-necked compatriot.

This time out, it’s up to the adults, namely Dee Wallace’s Mary and Peter Coyote’s Keys, to rescue the kids. In the end, it’s E.T. who rides in to save the day. The treatment could be viewed as a precursor to Spielberg’s disturbing “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Clearly, he was working through something during this period. Thankfully, he didn’t taint the specialness of his masterpiece with a sour film built around interplanetary child abuse.