There’s a fantastic article up on EW right now about the untold stories of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King‘s (almost) collaborations, which is where we got yesterday’s news that Spielberg, who outright owns the rights to the book, is hoping to at least produce an adaptation of King’s The Talisman. There’s another gem in there too.

During their chat with both King and Spielberg, EW uncovered the fun fact tidbit that Spielberg had originally wanted King to co-write Poltergeist with him!

“I wanted him to help me out with the script and sort of write it with me, but he was unavailable,” Spielberg told the site. King added to the story, “It didn’t work out because it was before the internet and we had a communication breakdown.”

King continued, explaining why he took so long to get back to Spielberg, which killed the potential collaboration: “I was on a ship going across the Atlantic to En­gland.”

Spielberg ended up writing Poltergeist with Michael Grais and Mark Victor, and Tobe Hooper was of course brought on board to direct – alongside Spielberg himself.