An original model of E.T. created for Steven Spielberg’s beloved film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial did not find a buyer after being put up for auction, Sotheby’s auction house in New York said on Thursday.
The piece, a little over 1m tall and which had been estimated to fetch between US$600,000 and US$900,000, comes from the collection of Italian special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi.
The three-time Oscar winner — including one for E.T. — died in 2012 at the age of 86.
Photo: Reuters
“Rambaldi’s beloved E.T. model is an extraordinary piece of film history,” Sotheby’s vice chair Cassandra Hatton told reporters.
“While it did not find a buyer during today’s auction, its significance remains undiminished,” Hatton added.
The model offered for sale is one of three used by Spielberg for his 1982 film.
In a statement issued before the auction, Hatton described the model as embodying “the artistry of an era before CGI [computer-generated imagery] took hold, a nostalgic and iconic piece of Hollywood history as captivating as the stories themselves.”
Sotheby’s said that a separate E.T. sketch made by Rambaldi had sold on Thursday for more than US$53,000, well above its top-end estimate of US$18,000.
In 2022, a metallic automaton representing E.T. and also used during the shooting of the successful film was sold for US$2.56 million at an auction organized by California-based auction house Julien’s.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the