Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Steven Spielberg originally conceived this movie as a science-fiction thriller, a sequel of sorts to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," with much-more-sinister aliens terrorizing a family's rural home (that was the premise of "Night Skies," the Spielberg concept that was never produced but was eventually cannibalized by other projects including "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" and this film). When Spielberg brought in Tobe Hooper to direct what later became "Poltergeist," Hooper convinced Spielberg to drop the science-fiction trappings altogether and make it a straight-up supernatural horror story.

Charles Austin Miller