The Alien (Unproduced Film)

April 30, 2018

The Alien (Unproduced Film)

Had anyone ever heard of a movie name The Alien?

Don’t get confused with Aliens by James Cameron.

The Alien was an un-produced Indian-American science fiction film in development in the late 1960s which was eventually cancelled. It was to be directed by celebrated Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray and co-produced by Columbia Pictures.

It is un-produced film by Satyajit Ray.

In 1967 , Ray wrote the script. It was loosely based on his bengali short story Banku Babur Bondhu (Banku Babu's Friend or Mr. Banku's Friend). The protagonist was a school teacher named Banku Babu, in contrast to his script for The Alien where the protagonist was a boy named Haba (mentally challenged).

Here are some illustrations of the original Bengali short story.

Illustrated by Satyajit Ray himself.

The plot of the movie The Alien:

The plot revolves around a spaceship that lands in a pond in rural Bengal. The villagers begin worshiping it as a temple risen from the depths of the earth. The alien, known as "Mr Ang", establishes contact with a young village boy named Haba (meaning "Dumb" in Bengali) through dreams and also plays a number of pranks on the village community in the course of its short stay on planet Earth. The plot contains the ebullient presence of an Indian businessman, a journalist from Calcutta and an American engineer.

Ray's biographer W. Andrew Robinson describes one particular scene from the screenplay as follows: "In a series of fantastically quick, short steps over the lotus leaves, the Alien reaches the shore of the pond. He looks down at the grass, examines the blade and is off hopping into the bamboo grove. There the Alien sees a small plant. His eyes light up with a yellow light. He passes his hand over the plant, and flowers come out. A thin, soft high-pitched laugh shows the Alien is pleased.

And the production was supposed to have Marlon Brando and Peter Sellers in the leading role.

However, Ray was surprised to find that the script he had written had already been copyrighted and the fee appropriated by Mike Wilson (Ray's representative in Hollywood). Wilson had copyrighted the script as co-writer, despite not being involved in any way in its creation. Marlon Brando later dropped out of the project and though an attempt was made to bring James Coburn in his place, Ray became disillusioned and returned to Calcutta. Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 1970s and 1980s but nothing came of it.

Now this happen:

In 1982, A Hollywood film released and Ray found noted similarities in the movie to his own earlier script. Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 Sight & Sound feature, with further details revealed by his biographer Andrew Robinson (in The Inner Eye, 1989). And the movie was E.T by Steven Spielberg.

Speilberg deined the claim and said “

I was a kid in high school when his script was circulating in Hollywood

However, Star Weekend Magazine disputes Spielberg's claim, pointing out that he had graduated from high school in 1965 and began his career as a director in Hollywood in 1969.

The Times of India noted that E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) had "remarkable parallels" with The Alien.

Interestingly, The 2003 Bollywood film Koi... Mil Gaya appears to be more based on Satyajit Ray's The Alien.

In particular, the film appears to parallel The Alien more closely than E.T. in that it revolves around an intellectually challenged person coming in contact with a friendly alien.

What I pity is that The Alien never get produced and we missed out a fantastic sci-fi movie from one of the most talented filmmakers of the world cinema, Satyajit Ray. And It would have been the first cinema on Alien by an Indian Filmmaker and showcasing Alien as friends of Human as well.

I admire both of the great filmmakers. Long LIVE cinema….