Later today, at 5:45pm, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial hits ITV2 screens to celebrate Good Friday. The legendary Steven Spielberg film centres on love, companionship, and doing the right thing – but this meant making sacrifices for the movie, as well. The iconic picture included such massive actors as Drew Barrymore, Henry Thomas and Pat Walsh as ET’s voice. But it lost out on a Star Wars actor joining the fray.
If you miss ET: The Extra-Terrestrial on TV today, you can watch it for FREE on Prime Video at your leisure.
Spielberg wrote the entirety of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial while he was on location shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark just a few years earlier.
Between takes of the Indiana Jones movie, the director dictated the script to his assistant, Melissa Matheson, who ended up going on to marry one of the biggest actors in Star Wars: Harrison Ford.
As it happens, when Spielberg began casting for ET, his best audition came from a little boy named Henry Thomas. The ten-year-old delivered such a powerful audition that he left Spielberg in tears. They hugged, and he told Thomas he had got the job there and then.
But, really, Thomas wanted to work with Spielberg because he was a massive Harrison Ford fan. And once they started shooting ET, he began asking the director if he could meet the Han Solo actor.
Spielberg eventually succumbed and wrote in a cameo scene where Thomas’s character, Elliott Taylor, was being scolded by his unseen principal: Harrison Ford.
The scene was ultimately cut, but Thomas recently spoke about the experience, telling EW: “When I met Steven, the first thing out of my mouth was I think: ‘I love Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ and my hero was Harrison Ford. I basically was just excited to meet Steven in hopes that I would meet Harrison.”
Although the scene in question was axed from the final movie, fans can still watch the moment below.
Spielberg also spoke about the cancelled Harrison Ford moment in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.
“[Ford] did the scene where ET is home levitating all of the stuff for his communicator up the stairs,” the filmmaker recalled. “Elliott is in the principal’s office after the frog incident. We don’t ever see Harrison’s face. We just hear his voice, see his body.”
Spielberg then went on to describe the scene almost shot-for-shot.
“Henry’s chair starts levitating,” Spielberg remembered. “So as ET is lifting all of the communicator paraphernalia up the stairs, Henry starts rising off the ground in the chair until his head hits the ceiling. Just as Harrison turns, ET loses control of the weight of everything and it all falls down the stairs, and Henry comes crashing down to the ground, and lands perfectly. Four-point landing. The principal turns around, and as far as he’s concerned, nothing ever happened.”
“That was the scene that we cut out,” he added. “But that’s where [Henry] got a chance to meet Harrison.”
ET was a massive success. It earned a staggering $793 million at the box office on a meagre $10 million budget.
It also won a round of awards, including four Oscars.
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial won awards for Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score.
You can watch ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for free on Prime Video now.
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