E.T. NUMBER$
- 1 = Peak all-time box-office chart position
- 1 = Rank among top-earning movies of the 1980s
- 1 = Rank among top-earning films during opening weekend
- 1 = Rank among top-earning films released in 1982
- 1 = Rank among top-earning Spielberg movies (adjusted for inflation)
- 1 = Rank among Universal’s all-time top-earning films at end of original run
- 4 = Number of Academy Awards
- 4 = Rank on all-time top-grossing films (adjusted for inflation)
- 8 = Number of weekends exceeding a $10 million gross*
- 9 = Number of Academy Award nominations
- 10 = Number of years top-grossing motion picture (worldwide)
- 14 = Number of years top-grossing motion picture (domestic)
- 16 = Number of weeks North America’s top-grossing movie*
- 30 = Number of days to surpass $100 million*
- 34 = Number of 70mm prints during first run
- 52 = Number of weeks longest-running engagement played
- 66 = Number of days to surpass $200 million*
- 76 = Number of months between theatrical and home-video release
- 184 = Number of days to surpass $300 million*
- 218 = Number of days to become all-time top-grossing motion picture
- 1103 = Number of cinemas playing the movie during its opening weekend
- $24.95 = SRP of initial Beta & VHS release*
- $29.95 = SRP of initial LaserDisc release
- $10,730 = Opening weekend per screen average
- $2.1 million = Domestic box-office gross (2022 IMAX re-issue)
- $3.1 million = Opening-day box-office gross**
- $5.2 million = Highest single-day gross* (Day 16)
- $10.5 million = Production cost
- $11.8 million = Opening-weekend box-office gross**
- $12.6 million = Second-weekend box-office gross*
- $13.7 million = Third-weekend box-office gross*
- $16.7 million = Fourth-weekend box-office gross* (4-day holiday)
- $21.8 million = Opening-week box-office gross**
- $32.4 million = Production cost (adjusted for inflation)
- $35.3 million = Domestic box-office gross (2002 re-issue)
- $40.6 million = Domestic box-office gross (1985 re-issue)
- $187.0 million = Domestic box-office rental (through 12/31/82)
- $209.6 million = Domestic box-office rental* (through 12/31/83)
- $228.0 million = Domestic box-office rental* (through 12/31/85)
- $259.8 million = International box-office gross (first run)
- $355.8 million = International box-office gross (first run + re-issues)
- $359.2 million = Domestic box-office gross* (first run)
- $437.1 million = Domestic box-office gross (first run + re-issues)
- $619.0 million = Worldwide box-office gross (first run)
- $792.9 million = Worldwide box-office gross (first run + re-issues)
- $1.3 billion = Domestic box-office gross (adjusted for inflation)
- $2.3 billion = Worldwide box-office gross (adjusted for inflation)
*established new motion picture industry record
**established new Universal Studios record
PASSAGES FROM A SAMPLING OF FILM REVIEWS
“Clap your hands if you believe in fairies, friendly aliens or Steven Spielberg. Even if you have doubts about the first two, let me assure you Spielberg deserves a standing ovation all his own for creating a well-nigh perfect family film in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. About the only people who aren’t going to be happy with this movie are the makers of Annie who may fear their sure-fire family audience will be siphoned off.” — Eleanor Ringel, The Atlanta Constitution
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is the best cinematic fairy tale since The Wizard of Oz.” — Michael Blowen, The Boston Globe
“Much of the credit must go to Spielberg’s genius for casting and directing children. A graver, less spacey version of Cary Guffey’s alien-accepting child in Close Encounters, Henry Thomas communicates intelligence, courage and a growing spirit. Drew Barrymore and Robert MacNaughton as his siblings and Dee Wallace as their mother complete a family circle that’s always credible, affectionate, charming, but not immune to pain—the father is absent, having run away to Mexico. It’s one of the few modern movie families we get a chance to care about.” — John Hartl, The Seattle Times
“There’s a luminous, uplifting quality to this movie, which is child-like and innocent without being childish.” — Carol Olten, The San Diego Union
“Spielberg has earned the tears that some people in the audience—and not just children—shed. The tears are tokens of gratitude for the spell the picture has put on the audience. Genuinely entrancing movies are almost as rare as extraterrestrial visitors.” — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
“As Elliott, Henry Thomas is wonderful. He never pushes himself at an audience. He is filled with awe toward his otherworldly friend and transmits that innocent wonderment to us, for it is Elliott we identify with in the film. Likewise, Spielberg has directed Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore with that same combination of naturalness and surprise. They are cute without working at it. Thanks to that, and to Melissa Mathison’s script which does not have a false note in it, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is a marvel.” — Michael Janusonis, The Providence Journal
“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial sparkles with humanity and humor and brims with action. Excitement comes not only from watching the wonders of the movie but also from the realization that a classic fairy tale is being born.” — Donna Chernin, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
“Not only is E.T. the best movie the 34-year-old Spielberg has yet made, but it is also the culmination of all the going home fantasies ever made, a movie of old-fashioned dopey optimism given vivid and refreshing originality by a wunderkind who has never quite grown up, and perhaps never even really left home.” — Ron Base, The Toronto Star
“It sounds like a Walt Disney project, but the people at Disney haven’t come this close to touching the child in each of us in 20 years. And I think the answer really is this simple: Spielberg, like the real Walt Disney did, conceives his stories from a child’s sense of wonder. Not as an adult trying to think like a child, but as an adult who hasn’t stopped thinking like one.” — Jack Matthews, Detroit Free Press
“In the tradition of the angels has Steven Spielberg created his transitory masterpiece. It is a work so timely, so plush with the humor and pathos of the 1980s, the video games and psychodrama, that it may endure only so long as Pac-Man, pizza and Marin County. But if E.T. lives longer than Camelot, that is the nature of fantasy and of now. Modernity is a Spielberg hallmark. No other director has so captured us as we are at the moment; his films could have been made the week they open, they are so apt, so full of exact slang. And in his new Spielbinder, the bittersweet story of an abandoned alien, the 34-year-old director/producer wraps modern metaphors around ancient allegory. It’s like reading the Bible while chewing bubblegum, and running through the forest primeval while playing John Williams on your Walkman. Awesome.” — Rita Kempley, The Washington Post
“Parts of E.T. are corny, and the whole is a fantasy, despite Spielberg’s sense for realistic detail. And much of the film’s superficial appeal depends on the success of the special-effects crew in devising and operating a charming little alien. But beneath that work something stronger is pulling us: There is a goodness to Spielberg’s work that suffuses nearly every moment on the screen, a sense that the filmmaker wishes the world well. Given his imagination, and his ability to translate his wishes without mawkishness or pandering, Spielberg has a unique gift for making us feel good. He is a storyteller for our time, and his E.T. is a marvelous story.” — Bill Cosford, The Miami Herald
“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial may become a children’s classic of the space age. The film freely recycles elements from all sorts of earlier children’s works, including Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz. E.T. is as contemporary as laserbeam technology, but it’s full of timeless longings expressed in children’s literature of all eras.” — Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“The movie is the work of a consummate story-teller who uses his celebrated technical skills to a different purpose. This is very much felt at the end, where there is a chase involving youngsters on bicycles that is every bit as exciting as the vaunted pursuits in other Spielberg works. But E.T. has, by that time, made you care much more about what happens. In that sense, E.T. is a Spielberg film in which the central characters are not overwhelmed by the exuberant craftsmanship.” — Desmond Ryan, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial may be the best Disney film Disney never made. Captivating, endearingly optimistic and magical at times, Steven Spielberg’s fantasy about a stranded alien from outer space protected by three kids until it can arrange for passage home is certain to capture the imagination of the world’s youth in the manner of most of his earlier pics, as well as those of George Lucas. Result will be a summer time bonanza for distrib. Universal.” — Todd McCarthy, Variety
“It’s fitting that E.T the Extra-Terrestrial opened nationally on the same day that Walt Disney’s 1943 animated classic, Bambi, went into re-release. Steven Spielberg, who co-produced and directed E.T., loads his story of a space alien’s estrangement on Earth with the best kind of Disneyesque simplicity.” — Michael Maza, The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)
“One of the most beautiful fantasy-adventure movies ever made. The millions who see E.T. will stay rooted to their seats, astonished at what movies can do.” — David Denby, New York Magazine
“I have written elsewhere that love stories seem to be in short supply these days, as they have been in the last decade of American movies. Maybe that’s because filmmakers don’t believe today’s hip audience will accept a pure—you might say unadulterated—love story. Instead we get films about relationships breaking apart: An Unmarried Woman, Kramer vs. Kramer. But the hunger for love on the screen is there, and director Spielberg gives it to us in E.T., and because the lovers are a little boy and a little creature, we accept it. Of such simple concepts, timeless entertainments are made. And it wouldn’t surprise me if E.T. was playing somewhere in Chicago until the end of this year. It is that appealing.” — Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
“A triumph. Wickedly funny and exciting as hell.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“They saved the best for last. Steven Spielberg brought the world premiere of E.T. to the closing of the Cannes Film Festival and showed the Godards and the Antonionis and Fassbinders who had bored everyone into a state of catatonia for the previous two weeks how real movies are made.” — Rex Reed, New York Post
“Steven Spielberg casts an enchanting spell in his best movie yet.” — Judy Stone, San Francisco Chronicle
“Steven Spielberg’s E.T. is so full of love and wonder, of pure invention and the best kind of screen magic, that it’s not only the film of the summer, it may be the film of the decade and possibly the double decade.” — Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times
“Well, I don’t love you, E.T.” — George Will, Newsweek
