E.T. II: The Lost Sequel

I found a story treatment that claims to be written by Steven Spielberg in 1982 for "E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears," a sequel to the original E.T. It's only a few pages long and after reading it, I'm glad they didn't make it.

The treatment describes a race of evil aliens, carnivourous albino versions of E.T.'s race with red eyes and big fangs. Kid you not. They land on Earth in the same forest as E.T., and have been doing all sorts of evil things like cattle mutilations and caging specimens. Now they're looking for E.T. for no apparent reason.

Meanwhile, Elliott is still waiting for a reply from E.T., and the communicator has been reacting to the signals from the evil aliens. Elliott and his friends head out to the forest and are captured. This time, the aliens talk telepathically, and the leader of the evil aliens is named Korel. At this point, we discover E.T.'s real name is Zrek. The aliens torture Elliott, trying to find Zrek, but Elliott can't help them. As he's dragged back to his cell, E.T. (or Zrek) comes waddling in like the cavalry in an Old West movie. He opens all the cages (somehow), reprograms the Evil alien ship to leave (somehow), and then E.T. leaves on his own ship after many hugs and kisses.

I'm assuming Spielberg had plans to add more to this story, because as it stands it is barely more than I described. It's more like a one-hour Christmas special than a two-hour movie, and Lucas can attest to how badly those turn out. And E.T. doesn't show up until the end. It's so horrible that I wonder if it's even real, but it is. I'll bet Spielberg wishes it had disappeared twenty years ago.

NOTE: This post has been expanded to include the review (05/23/2009).