In the minds of modern movie lovers, 1985 is the year Back to the Future arrived. Back then, though, another movie shared the title of the most loved movie of that year. That only changed when, inexplicably, strange forces embarked on a campaign to retroactively erase it from existence.
Until it was deleted from the universe sometime in the early 2000s, the two 1985 movies everyone was talking about, buying tickets for, recording off their television using a wonky VCR hooked to rabbit ears, and renting copies of at their local Take One Video stores, were director Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future and Ron Howard’s Cocoon.
Oddly enough, Cocoon was originally going to be a Robert Zemeckis film, but problems with the production got him fired. Ron Howard took over, and Cocoon became his.
Ron Howard’s Movie Won Acclaim Before Being Erased
While Back to the Future earned more money at the box office, with its massively huge $210 million take, Cocoon was far more acclaimed. Cocoon won multiple Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actor for Don Ameche and Best Visual Effects for the work of famed artist Ralph McQuarrie. Ron Howard even beat out Robert Zemeckis for Best Director at the Saturn Awards when Cocoon ran away with the sci-fi honors Best Director trophy.
Now Cocoon is gone. Really gone. As in you can’t watch it anywhere. At all.
What happened? What went wrong? Is there any way to see it? By the end of this article, you’ll have those answers.
But first, since Cocoon hasn’t been available to watch in the United States for decades, it’s safe to assume many of you have never seen it. So here’s what you need to know about Cocoon.
How Cocoon Conquered 1985 By Winning Awards And Audiences
For Ron Howard Cocoon was the movie that turned him into a big deal as a director. Without it, we might never have gotten movies like Apollo 13 and Parenthood.
Howard’s first science fiction movie was made after Splash but before he made Willow. His approach to making it was unconventional. It may have been influenced by Splash, given the association both movies have with the water, but Splash is a straight-up comedy, and Cocoon is nothing of the sort. There’s never been anything quite like it, before or since.
At first, Cocoon is a laid-back movie about the residents of a retirement home. They sneak next door and swim in a pool at an empty house, as a minor act of rebellion against their waning years.
One day they show up for a swim and see large rocks under the water at the bottom of the pool. They decide to swim anyway and find themselves revitalized.
The misery of old age begins to vanish. They regain their health. They start dancing. They start having physical experiences again.
While Wilford Brimley is busy with his wife, in parallel there’s 1980s icon Steve Gutenberg as the Captain of a fishing boat. A group of nice people hire his services for a charter, and he spends the next month ferrying them out into the ocean, where they go scuba diving and bring back large rocks.
Out at sea and lusting after the female member of their group, Guttenberg accidentally stumbles into the truth: they’re aliens, and those rocks they’ve been bringing up from the ocean floor are alien pods. The aliens aren’t upset at being unmasked, and after they calm him down, Captain Jack agrees to keep their secret and assist.
The alien’s intentions seem pure, and they’re friendly. So friendly they aren’t angry when they find the old coots from the retirement home living it up in their pool. The aliens are Antareans, and as the movie develops, they inadvertently teach the locals lessons about life, mortality, and what it means to truly be human.
Eventually, other nursing home residents find out about the pool and, in their enthusiasm, ruin it for everyone else. With their mission ruined, the Antareans must go home, forcing the old folks of the nursing home into difficult choice.
What would you do, to be young again?
Wearing its heart firmly on its sleeve, Cocoon has all the warmth that characterizes great Ron Howard films. A legendary cast, including Wilfred Brimley, Steve Guttenberg, Jessica Tandy, and the aforementioned Don Ameche, helps him bring this story to life.
Both critics and audiences loved Cocoon. The movie was a legitimate cultural phenomenon and one of the biggest box-office hits of that year. It was even bigger on VHS, with copies flying off video store shelves as fast as people could rent them.
Why Cocoon Isn’t Available To Watch On Streaming
All of this makes the modern mystery surrounding Cocoon that much stranger. This is a major, beloved, award-winning film directed by one of the biggest names in Hollywood and filled with iconic A-list actors. Why isn’t Cocoon available to watch anywhere, at all?
This should be an easy question to answer, but the reality of what has happened to Cocoon is surrounded in silence and mystery. Director Ron Howard has been asked about it and didn’t answer. The same is true of star Steve Guttenberg.
The closest we can get to providing an answer comes from an anonymous source dug up by the site Uproxx. According to that anonymous insider, the most likely, but not only, reason Cocoon is not available to stream is that “the music in Cocoon is not currently cleared for new media or transnational sales.”
Is It James Horner’s Fault?
Why the music isn’t cleared for streaming, has not been disclosed, but it’s a safe bet that it has something to do with the film’s composer, James Horner.
James Horner got his start as a film composer in the 70s, but it wasn’t until he did the masterful score for 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer, working on a shoestring budget for the film, had to go with someone mostly unknown and cheap. And that was James Horner.
Horner’s work on the movie earned him acclaim, and Cocoon was a big stepping stone towards making him a household name. However, the way his contract was negotiated may have been odd and different from the other movies he worked on. An agency was involved as a middleman, and that may have created a rights issue that likely turned into an even bigger problem when, sadly, James Horner died in 2015 at the age of 61.
Why Cocoon Isn’t Available To Watch On DVD Or Blu-Ray
Confusion over the rights to Horner’s score doesn’t totally solve the mystery. Because Cocoon isn’t just unavailable to stream in the United States, you can’t get it on physical media either.
It was last released on DVD more than 20 years ago and has long since been out of print on all forms of physical media. Copies of Cocoon have become so rare, that Ebay sellers are now charging hundreds of dollars for them.
How To Avoid Being Fooled By Fakes
Making matters even more confusing for would-be viewers, is that you can easily be misled by other films currently available. For example, you can rent a movie called Cocoon on Prime Video, but it’s a 2022 art house love story, not the 1985 Ron Howard masterpiece.
You can pay to rent the sequel Cocoon: The Return on platforms like Prime and YouTube, but trust me: that film is a disaster. If you’re thinking you’ll just dig up an illegal bootleg, you can’t do that either.
You can’t even find a good, clear copy of the movie’s trailer on the internet, much less actual scenes from the film. Cocoon is being totally erased from existence, and no one seems to know why.
Disney Is The Reason Cocoon Can’t Be Watched Anymore
If you’re looking for a place to lay blame, look no further than Disney. Cocoon was owned by 20th Century Fox and when Disney acquired the company in 2019, they got Cocoon too. Given the movie’s unavailability, it seems clear the company has no interest in letting people see it.
Someone out there, some dark and shadowy Disney executive with a lot of power, is doing everything they can to prevent you from seeing it. Sadly, it’s exactly the kind of behavior we’ve come to expect from the once-great Walt Disney Company.
How To Watch Cocoon
Before writing this article, we watched a copy of Cocoon. Getting it wasn’t easy. To watch it, Giant Freakin Robot had to overpay for one of those eBay copies, wait two weeks for it to show up, and then digitized the Blu-Ray for local streaming.
If you already have a copy of Cocoon, hold it tight. If you’ve got the money, go get one of those ridiculously overpriced Blu-rays off eBay before they’re all gone, and share it with your friends.
Cocoon is a great movie. One of the best science fiction movies of all time.
Share this article with your friends to send them a message. Let Disney know Cocoon should be seen.
