A multi-million pound remake of the 1982 hit ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestrial’ will not now be filmed at the foot of the Sperrins due to poor mobile phone coverage. 

Steven Spielberg, who has always been a big fan of Greencastle GAA club and once considered making a film about their All Ireland win years ago, is said to be devastated at the decision but admitted E.T. phoning home was crucial to the plot again this time.

Script writer Marie McBurn revealed the difficulties around the poor signal couldn’t be overcome:

“It was just stupid. We tried a few scenes and you’d have E.T. shouting ‘can you hear me now?’ down the phone and moving all over the place to get a signal. It totally ruined the believably of it all.”

The news comes as a big blow to the Greencastle area. Early estimates reckoned the windfall from tourism could have topped over £100m which they had planned to spent on an enormous Christmas tree with massive balls and long lines of tinsel.

In other news, a boy walked the whole half a mile to school last week in Killyman. He became the first child to walk to school since 1998.