E.T. model sells for $3.5m at massive movie prop auction
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With 85 mechanical joints, nearly everything moves on the E.T. model.
PHOTO: AFP
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LOS ANGELES – The original animatronic model used to bring big-eyed alien E.T. to life in American director Steven Spielberg’s classic sci-fi film sold over the weekend for a whopping US$2.6 million (S$3.5 million), according to auction organisers.
The item was sold as part of a two-day mega-sale put on by Julien’s Auctions and Turner Classic Movies that included more than 1,300 props ranging from American actor Robert DeNiro’s Raging Bull (1980) boxing gloves to Australian actor Chris Hemsworth’s Thor hammer from the Thor (2011 to 2022) and Avengers (2012 to 2019) movies.
But the highest-ticket item was the extra-friendly extra-terrestrial, whose glowing finger and childlike innocence melted hearts in 1982, before the age of ubiquitous computer-generated imagery.
With 85 mechanical joints, nearly everything moves on the E.T. model, from the eyes to the neck and, of course, that pointy finger held aloft as the alien informed his new friend Elliott that he wanted to “phone home”.
A maquette of E.T. sold for US$125,000, while one of the bikes used in the film’s climatic getaway scene went for US$115,000.
Other movie memorabilia sold at the Beverly Hills auction included the staff that late actor Charlton Heston used to part the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments (1956), which went for US$448,000; and English actor Daniel Radcliffe’s Nimbus 2000 broomstick from the Harry Potter film series (2001 to 2011), which fetched US$128,000. AFP
