Trailer
Plot summary
In 1977 the Voyager 2 probe carries a recorded invitation to alien civilizations. A scout vessel answers it, and U.S. military aircraft shoot the craft down over Chequamegon Bay, Wisconsin. The surviving occupant, a being of energy, reaches the home of the recently widowed Jenny Hayden and clones a body for itself from a lock of hair belonging to her dead husband Scott. Speaking the little English it learned from the probe's record, the Starman explains that it must reach a crater in Arizona within three days or die, and it forces Jenny to drive it there. Jenny is hostile toward her passenger, and the authorities hunt the pair across the country.
Cast
- John Walter Davisas Brad Heinmuller
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Starman (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Dean Riesner spent over two years on incessant demands for rewrites, eventually writing five rewrites of Starman with six different directors, but he received no screen credit because, as he put it, the Writers Guild decided he had not contributed 50 percent of the screenplay.
- Carpenter resolved to thank his screenwriter with an on-screen dedication to Riesner in the end credits. The Writers' Guild deemed it a deliberately provocative violation of their ruling and for a short time threatened to force Columbia to destroy all prints of the film containing it.
- In the summer of 1982 Badham read Variety's first review of E.T. and realized the two projects were too similar; Douglas immediately ordered script revisions, but Badham eventually moved on to take over directing duties on WarGames.
- Jeff Bridges was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 57th Academy Awards, making Starman the only film by John Carpenter to receive an Academy Award nomination.
- Badham wanted Tom Conti for the lead role, having seen him in London doing Whose Life Is It Anyway?, and said the actor was anxious to do it.
- Shawn Levy declared in 2021 that the long-discussed remake of Starman was improbable, as he could not find a good draft that was worthy of adaptation.
