Cocoon

Cocoon is a 1985 American science fiction  comedy-drama film directed by Ron Howard. The film stars Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley,  Hume Cronyn, Brian Dennehy, Jack Gilford,  Steve Guttenberg, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Gwen Verdon, Herta Ware, Tahnee Welch, and Linda Harrison, and follows a group of elderly people rejuvenated by aliens.

About 10,000 years ago, peaceful aliens from the planet Antarea set up an outpost on Earth on Atlantis. When Atlantis sank, twenty aliens were left behind, kept alive in large rock-like cocoons at the bottom of the ocean. A group of Antareans have returned to collect them. Disguising themselves as humans, they rent a house with a swimming pool and charge the water with “life force” to give the cocooned Antareans energy to survive the trip home. They charter a boat from a local captain named Jack (Steve Guttenberg), who helps them retrieve the cocoons. Jack spies on Kitty, a beautiful woman from the team who chartered his boat, while she undresses in her cabin, and discovers that she is an alien. After the aliens reveal themselves to him and explain what is going on, he decides to help them. However their mission is hampered by a number of elderly people from a nearby retirement community who had been secretly using the pool, and who discover unusual powers from within these cocoons.

Robert Zemeckis was originally hired as director, and spent a year working on it in  development. He was at the time directing  Romancing the Stone, another film for the same studio, 20th Century Fox. Fox executives previewed Romancing the Stone before its release in 1984 and hated it. That, in addition to his two previous directorial efforts, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars, both being commercial failures (though critically acclaimed) led the studio to fire Zemeckis as director of Cocoon. He was replaced with Ron Howard.

SPOLIER ALERT!

The film was shot in and around St. Petersburg, Florida and the score was composed and conducted by James Horner. 

The film was also a box office hit, making over $76 million in North America where it became the sixth highest-grossing film of 1985. It also earned Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Don Ameche) and Best Visual Effects, and was followed by the sequel Cocoon: The Return in 1988, in which almost all of the original cast returned.