(Los Angeles) ET will soon have a new home to call: The puppet of cinema’s most cult alien will go up for auction on Saturday, 40 years after the release of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece.
Collectors who have kept their child’s soul should snap up the “number one” robot designed for the film, put up for sale by the specialized house Julien’s Auctions. Estimated between two and three million dollars, the price of this mechanical figurine of one meter high could fly well beyond.
With its aluminum frame and exposed cables, the puppet is a little gem of engineering, made up of 85 mechanical joints capable of moving the nose, eyes, eyelids, neck, arms… Enough to give full life to this creature abandoned on Earth, whose story of friendship with little Elliott moved the whole world.
Animated by a dozen people on set, the alien seemed so real that actress Drew Barrymore, who played “little sister [d’Elliott] in the film, really believed that ET belonged to a real living species”, recalls Martin Nolan, the executive director of Julien’s Auctions.
At the time, in a cinema without digital, Steven Spielberg spoke to special effects specialist Carlo Rambaldi.
The Italian, father of King Kong from 1976 and theAlien by Ridley Scott in 1979, won a third Oscar thanks to ET. The alien’s big blue eyes, which have melted generations with the “ET home phone” line, are inspired by those of his Himalayan cat.
Beyond this puppet, enthusiasts will also be able to acquire unpublished sketches used for the design of the character, or even one of the bicycles (estimated between 30,000 and 50,000 dollars) which follows Elliott and ET in the cult scene where they fly to the moon.
Scheduled Saturday and Sunday in Beverly Hills and online, the auction brings together around 1,300 legendary objects, drawn from decades of Hollywood life.
Enthusiasts and collectors will be able to snatch several dresses of the icon Marilyn Monroe (between 40,000 and 80,000 dollars), the brandished stick with which Charlton Heston split the Red Sea in The ten Commandments (between 40,000 and 60,000 dollars), or even a model ofShooting starone of the racing brooms straddled by some characters of the saga Harry Potter (between 30,000 and 50,000 dollars).
Beyond these exceptional pieces, a number of more modest objects, belonging to the Marvel universe, Star Wars, or Terminator, are also put under the hammer. Less fortunate fans, for example, will be able to compete for the resin cast capable of driving Jim Carrey crazy in The Maskpriced around 1000 dollars.