Close Encounters of the Third Kind

:This article is about the film; for the classfication, see Close encounter.

Trivia

• Spielberg was given an unprecedented budget of $20m (1977 dollars). However, the film lacked the merchandising and sequel potential of Star Wars, hence the drive to extract extra earnings by releasing 'Special Editions'.
• When the original director of Jaws 2 was fired, Spielberg considered taking over. However, his contractual obligations to CE3K meant that production on the sequel would have been delayed by an expensive year.
• The 5 tones that the space ship plays back and forth with the humans have shown up in later movies and TV shows, notably as a code entered on a pushbutton keypad in Moonraker of the James Bond series.
• Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, a UFO researcher who coined the term "close encounter", was a consultant for the film, makes a cameo appearance.

See also

• The Day the Earth Stood Still, an early classic science fiction movie with benevolent aliens.