Steven Spielberg has freeze rights built into his deal for every movie now, and that’s down to E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.
It’s a fairly well known story that after the success of 1982’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures went down the path of a possible sequel. In fact, by the summer of 1982, Spielberg and the late screenwriter Melissa Mathison had put an outline for a sequel together by the name of E.T II: Nocturnal Fears.
The plot of Nocturnal Fears would have seen a return for Henry Thomas’ Elliott, who this time would be kidnapped by aliens, but Spielberg quickly abandoned it. Universal Pictures was believed to have been on the disappointed side.
As we saw with Jaws 2 though, this was not a period of his career where Steven Spielberg could have stopped an E.T. sequel being made without him. He’s admitted as much in a new conversation with Drew Barrymore (who, of course, also featured in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial). Confirming he now would never even entertain the idea of doing an E.T. sequel, Spielberg admitted that he’s had freeze rights on every film he’s done since.
“I didn’t have any rights”, he admits of going back to 1982. “Before E.T., I had some rights, but I didn’t have a lot of rights … I kind of didn’t have what we call ‘the freeze,’ where you can stop the studio from making a sequel because you control the freeze on sequels, remakes and other ancillary uses of the IP. I didn’t have that. I got it after E.T. because of its success.”
He admitted that he “flirted” with the idea of doing a sequel, but walked away.
He did, infamously, re-edit the film slightly in 2002, doing a sort-of George Lucas ‘special edition’ where he retroactively changed the emphasis of shots. Even then, he quickly admitted afterwards that it was a mistake, he regretted it, and the theatrical cut has remained the official one ever since. The theatrical cut has thus remained in circulation. Perhaps he could have a word with George about this…