Video: 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial' trailer

(Wednesday, May 26, 1982, evening Central European Summer Time) — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, an American science fiction film about a lonely boy who summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape Earth and return to his home world, premiered tonight as the closing film of the Cannes Film Festival.

Video: 'E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Movie' (10 clips)

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film stars Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, and Drew Barrymore.

The film was an immediate blockbuster, surpassing Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time, a record it held for eleven years until Spielberg’s own Jurassic Park surpassed it in 1993.