Footage of an “amazing” prank that Steven Spielberg played on the director of The Goonies has surfaced online.
Spielberg, who produced the 1985 adventure film, joined forces with the entirety of its cast to pull off the lengthy trick.
He devised his plan after production had wrapped after a full year of filming, and director Richard Donner had decided to fly back to Hawaii for some much-needed relaxation time.
However, Spielberg flew the child stars, including Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen and Martha Plimpton, out to surprise Donner – and the actors were there waiting for him before had even arrived.
Also participating in the prank were Anne Ramsey, Robert Davi and Joe Pantoliano, who played the villainous Fratellis.
In the clip that’s been shared on Twitter, Donner, visibly shocked, can be heard saying: “I don’t believe it! Oh my God! What the hell are you doing here?’
The child actors are excited to see Donner, with Cohen, who played Chunk, telling him: “We’re gonna stay with you the whole time we’re here.” Astin adds: “We’re gonna do a sequel to the movie.”
After he hugs the Fratellis actors, he jokingly flips his middle finger at a figure off-screen, presumably Spielberg, stating: “I’ll get you.”
The footage has been hailed as “amazing” and “one of the best things I’ve ever seen on Twitter” by viewers.
“Well that’s it then. World’s greatest prank. Stop the search,” one user wrote.
Spielberg previously spoke of the prank in 2020 during a Goonies reunion on Josh Gad’s Reunited Apart YouTube channel, saying: “Richard kept saying, ‘Oh, my God, I got two weeks to go, and I can’t wait to finish and I’m going to go to my house in Hawaii, and I’m gonna get away from all of this noise. It’s extraordinary and I love ’em to pieces, but I can’t stand it anymore.’”
Plimpton said of the moment Donner saw them: “He went white as a sheet. We thought we’d given him a coronary.”
