<Tr> <Th> Budget </Th> <Td> $20 million </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $306.1 million </Td> </Tr> <P> Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 American science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut . It tells the story of Roy Neary, an everyday blue - collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO). </P> <P> Close Encounters was a long - cherished project for Spielberg . In late 1973, he developed a deal with Columbia Pictures for a science fiction film . Though Spielberg received sole credit for the script, he was assisted by Paul Schrader, John Hill, David Giler, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, and Jerry Belson, all of whom contributed to the screenplay in varying degrees . The title is derived from Ufologist J. Allen Hynek's classification of close encounters with aliens, in which the third kind denotes human observations of aliens or "animate beings ." Douglas Trumbull served as the visual effects supervisor, while Carlo Rambaldi designed the aliens . </P>

When was close encounters of the third kind made