US films with same synopsis

If this is posted in the wrong place don't have a go as I don't know where else to post it.

having seen Rasing Helen, Uncle Buck and A Night on the Town recently I wondered why some US films have have more or less the same story line

In all three films an unsuitable person gets left in charge of three children, five year old girl with a cuddly toy, ten year old boy who has some issue and a fifteen year old girl who goes out with the most unsuitable lad on the block and gets rescued from sleeping with him.

are they runing out of idears?

Metropol?

Did you know that ET and Poltergeist started life as the same film? Spielberg's idea was that a family would be terrorised by a group of bad creatures, but one friendly creature would be befriended by the children. He separated the story of bad creatures into "Poltergeist", and the story of a friendly one into "ET".

Originally the film would have been called "Watch the Skies", which he later worked into a third story called "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

So there you go. One idea, three movies.

ps - there is no "r" in ideas.

can this be moved to metropol then?

and next time I type idea I'll hidear (hide the 'r')

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