On June 11, then 34-year-old director Steven Spielberg reportedly drew on his own experiences as an unusually imaginative, often-lonely child of divorce for his science-fiction classic E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, which is released in 1982. E.T. had stupendous success at the box office, eventually raking in some $435 million (it was re-released in 1985 and a special 20th-anniversary edition was issued in 2002). As of 2008, it stood at No. 5 on the list of the highest-earning films of all time.
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