National Film RegistryLibrary of Congress · Inducted 1994
“Written by Melissa Mathison and directed by Steven Spielberg, this film chronicles the relationship between a young boy (Henry Thomas) and a benevolent alien who is stranded on Earth and trying to find his way back to his home planet. The film's masterful blending of hopeful innocence with excitement and humor made it both a critical and popular success.”
Universal Pictures · Amblin Entertainment · 115 min
Box office
$792.9M worldwide on a $10.5M budget
Honors
Academy Awards — 4 wins, 9 nominationsGolden Globe Awards — 2 wins, 4 nominationsLos Angeles Film Critics Association — 2 winsBritish Academy Film Awards — 1 win, 8 nominationsAll 20 wins · 27 nominations on record
Academy Awards: Best Visual Effects
Academy Awards: Best Original Score
Academy Awards: Best Sound Editing
Academy Awards: Best Sound
Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture – Drama
Golden Globe Awards: Best Original Score
Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Film
Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Director
British Academy Film Awards: Best Original Music
Japan Academy Film Prize: Outstanding Foreign Language Film
David di Donatello: Best Foreign Director
National Board of Review: National Board of Review: Top Ten Films
Saturn Award: Best Special Effects
Saturn Award: Best Writing
Saturn Award: Best Science Fiction Film
Saturn Award: Best Music
Saturn Award: Best Classic Film DVD Release
National Society of Film Critics Award: Best Director
Boston Society of Film Critics Award: Best Director
Grammy Award: Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media
Scholarship
Named in the title of 28 peer-reviewed works
Examples
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial — 100 Science Fiction Films, 2013
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — A K Peters/CRC Press eBooks, 2010
E.T. the extra-terrestrial — Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter), 1982
Sources: Wikidata · Library of Congress · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Universal Pictures released E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in the summer of 1982, and Steven Spielberg's story of a stranded alien and the boy who hides him became one of the defining box office events of its decade, holding the title of highest-grossing film for years afterward. Built on Melissa Mathison's screenplay, the picture combined suburban Americana with pure wonder, earning nine Academy Award nominations and cementing itself as a touchstone of family filmmaking. Its cultural footprint extends well beyond cinema, into merchandise, television, and the collector's market for physical film artifacts tied to its most cherished sequences.
This cell is drawn from the bicycle flight passage, the film's most iconic set piece, pairing Elliott, the boy who befriends E.T., with his older brother Michael, part of the household drawn into protecting the visitor. The moment named here is the airborne escape that gave the film its signature image, reproduced endlessly in posters and memory. As a 35mm frame from that stretch of footage, it represents a physical fragment of one of cinema's most reproduced sequences, prized by collectors for its direct tie to the story's emotional and narrative peak.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm theatrical release print of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
Gauge
35mm, confirmed by four perforations per frame on both edges; the strip holds three frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges; spacing appears even and the punched edges look clean throughout the strip.
Soundtrack
A variable-area optical track is visible between the picture area and the lower perforation row, appearing as a dual-band variable-area stereo track; Dolby Digital data blocks are not discernible, nor is a DTS timecode line or SDDS outer-edge data.
Edge print
Lower edge reads: 2383 648 255 1 30 KOD A K 28 200 1 H
Base & colour
The base carries a cyan-tinted safety stock tint; the dye image reads warm amber-orange with no obvious fading or red shift.
Projection history
No splices or cue marks are visible; faint longitudinal lines are present across the frames, consistent with a print that has passed through a projector gate.
Picture
Positive colour image; all three frames appear to be consecutive frames from a single shot and the warm backlit silhouette imagery is consistent with the iconic bicycle-against-moon sequence from the film on record.
Era check
Kodak stock code 2383 is the standard colour print stock used for 35mm release prints from the early 1980s onward, and the dual variable-area optical track is consistent with a theatrical release print of a 1982 Universal Pictures film.
Read from the original intake capture shown below. Observations only — film is authenticated, not graded.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
CROWN SERIAL 000062713
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
