E.T. will soon have a new home to call: the puppet of cinema's most famous alien will go up for auction on Saturday, December 17, forty years after the release of Steven Spielberg's masterpiece. Collectors should snatch up the "number one" robot designed for the film, put up for sale by the specialized house Julien's Auctions. Estimated between 2 and 3 million dollars, the price of this mechanical figurine of one meter high could fly well beyond these figures.
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 Elliott moved the whole world. Animated by a dozen people on set, the alien seemed so real that actress Drew Barrymore, who played "[Elliott's] little sister in the film, really believed that ET belonged to a real living species," Martin Nolan, the executive director of Julien's Auctions told AFP. At the time, in a cinema without digital technology, Steven Spielberg spoke to special effects specialist Carlo Rambaldi. The Italian, father of the 1976 King Kong and Ridley Scott's Alien in 1979, won a third Oscar thanks to E.T.
1,300 items put up for sale
Besides this puppet, enthusiasts will also be able to acquire previously unseen sketches used for the design of the character, or one of the bicycles (estimated between $30,000 and $50,000) that accompanied Elliott and E. T. in the famous scene where they fly to the moon. Scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in Beverly Hills and online, the auction offers around 1,300 iconic items, culled from decades of Hollywood life. Enthusiasts and collectors will be able to snap up several Marilyn Monroe dresses (between $40,000 and $80,000), the brandished staff with which Charlton Heston split the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments (between $40,000 and $60,000), or a model of the Firebolt, one of the broomsticks straddled by certain characters from the Harry Potter saga (between $30,000 and $50,000).
Beyond these exceptional pieces, a number of more modest objects, belonging to the Marvel universe, Star Wars, or Terminator, are also available. Less fortunate fans, for example, will be able to compete for the resin cast capable of driving Jim Carrey crazy in The Mask, priced at around $1,000.