The legendary ET the extraterrestrial puppet is about to be auctioned off, will its price soar?

ET will soon have a new home to call: Cinema’s most cult alien puppet goes 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, which is being sold by specialist house Julien’s Auctions. Estimated at between two and three million dollars, the price of this meter-tall mechanical figurine could fly well beyond that.

With its aluminum structure and visible cables, the puppet is a small engineering jewel, made up of 85 mechanical joints capable of moving the nose, eyes, eyelids, neck, arms… Enough to give full life to this abandoned creature on Earth, whose friendship story with little Elliott moved the whole world.

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Animated by a dozen people on set, the alien looked so real that actress Drew Barrymore, who played “(Elliott’s) little sister in the film, truly believed ET was a real living species,” Martin reminds AFP. Nolan, the executive director of Julien’s Auctions. At the time, in a cinema without digital, Steven Spielberg spoke with special effects specialist Carlo Rambaldi.

The Italian, father of “King Kong” in 1976 and of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” in 1979, had won a third Oscar thanks to ET. The alien’s big blue eyes, which have fused generations with the “ET home phone” line, are inspired by those of his Himalayan cat. In addition to this puppet, fans will also be able to acquire unpublished sketches used for the design of the character, or even one of the bicycles (estimated between 30,000 and 50,000 dollars) that follow Elliott and ET in the cult scene where they fly to the moon.

Legendary items for sale

Held Saturday and Sunday in Beverly Hills and online, the auction brings together nearly 1,300 legendary items 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 raised stick with which Charlton Heston split the Red Sea in “The Ten Commandments” (between 40,000 and 60,000 dollars), or even a model of “Shooting Star”, one of the broomsticks mounted on some characters from the “Harry Potter” saga (between 30,000 and 50,000 dollars).

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In addition to these exceptional pieces, a series of more modest objects belonging to the Marvel, Star Wars or Terminator universe are also being put to the hammer. Less fortunate fans can, for example, compete for the resin cast capable of driving Jim Carrey crazy in “The Mask”, priced at around $1,000.