IT CAME FROM BEYOND TO NBC

It’s a jungle out there in network-land, and NBC, in its lust for higher ratings, has brought to its camp a large and imposing presence: Steven Spielberg.

Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, likens Spielberg to an “800-pound gorilla,” which in Hollywood terms means a high-priced species that makes its own decisions on casting, content, tone, style and, in this case, promotion and publicity as well.

Those are the extraordinary powers Spielberg has over “Amazing Stories,” the half-hour anthology series for the fall season that he created, executive produces and sometimes writes and directs.

“This is not a totally new thing,” Tartikoff said when asked about Spielberg’s enormous creative controls. “There are a lot of 800-pound gorillas at NBC: (Bill) Cosby . . . (Johnny) Carson. Steve Bochco had virtual creative control (on “Hill Street Blues”). We don’t tell the producers of ‘Cheers’ what to do. We don’t tell (Michael) Landon what to do. . . .”

But the newest gorilla has been asked to perform even greater feats of strength . . . and at a higher price.

NBC is pinning much of its 1985-86 strategy on Spielberg and the notion that “Amazing Stories,” which will air Sundays at 8 p.m. beginning in mid-September, can help create a new NBC stronghold on a night that normally belongs to CBS. The latter’s top-rated Sunday lineup consists of “60 Minutes,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Crazy Like a Fox” and “Trapper John, M.D.”

Without even seeing a pilot (very unusual in television), NBC has ordered an unprecedented 44 episodes--two years’ worth--at a record $750,000 per half-hour from Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, which produces the show in association with Universal Television. That’s a whopping $33 million wagered on “Amazing Stories’ ” ability to out-draw “Murder, She Wrote” at 8 p.m. and pave the way for a ratings victory on Sundays, perhaps with enough new-found ratings points to win the season.

For that potential, the network is paying roughly twice what it pays for half-hour shows like “Cheers” or “Family Ties” in their first season (about $350,000 to $400,000); and more than it pays for the proven mega-hit “The Cosby Show” in its second year (in the neighborhood of $600,000).

What’s more, the actual budget, knowledgeable sources say, is closer to $1 million per half-hour on average, which puts it in the range of full-hour shows. Universal shells out the $250,000 or so per episode over and above the network’s fee. “It’s an expensive project,” acknowledged Universal TV President Robert Harris. “Steven will not do television unless he has the tools to do so.”

In return for his command over these astronomical sums, Spielberg has unpacked his trunk of unused ideas and enlisted some of the best-known film makers to create high-gloss tales of horror, humor and weirdness.

He also has brought some of his strictest movie-making practices to the world of television. He has cloaked the set with secrecy, limiting advance word about the show and restricting the network from using clips in promoting the new season.

Documentarian Les Mayfield, who directed the nine-minute film “The Making of ‘Amazing Stories’ ” for Amblin, said that security on the set “is unprecedentedly tight for TV and as tight as on any of his movies.” As evidence, his partner George Zaloom produced an “Amazing Stories” ID badge, mandatory for everyone on the set.

While most new shows are vying for pre-season publicity, Spielberg has allowed neither reporters nor press relations officials from Universal or NBC on the set. The exceptions in the former category were two reporters from Time magazine for whom Spielberg “rolled out the red carpet,” according to an Amblin insider, in his quest for a cover story. (He received it in the July 15 issue, which presented readers with a glowing tribute to Spielberg’s career.) The lone public relations person on the set is a former KTTV publicist who serves as the narrow conduit to NBC’s and Universal’s normally revved-up publicity machines.

Spielberg also has the final say on casting and story lines, 15 of which he has personally conceived thus far. Scripts are reviewed by the network’s broadcast standards department but are otherwise immune from network tinkering.

Even Tartikoff only recently saw his first completed episode of the 13 already shot.

So while episodes of CBS’ “The Twilight Zone” and most other new fall shows were being screened for the nation’s TV critics last month, “Amazing Stories” remained under wraps. “He didn’t show the shark in ‘Jaws,’ and he didn’t show E.T. in promoting the film (“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”),” Tartikoff said in defense of the no-sneak-preview policy. “I think he’ll stick by his policy of not pre-screening, and we’ll back him.”

Spielberg has never been a big one for dispensing advance information. Before the 1982 release of “E.T.,” he told this reporter that he considers pre-release information about many movies damaging because “by the time the movie comes out people feel like they’ve already seen it.”

The same concern applies to “Amazing Stories,” and the boss, not unexpectedly, sets a tight-lipped example for his staff. In a conversation backstage at the May gathering of NBC’s affiliate station owners and managers, Spielberg said he did not want to be interviewed about “Amazing Stories” until “a few more episodes were completed.” Asked to define “a few more,” he said “a total of 19”--nearly all of the first year’s order for the show. On that basis, he refused to be interviewed by Calendar about “Amazing Stories” until much closer to the series’ premiere.

That might not be how NBC would have handled the advance promotion, but Tartikoff knows that 800-pound gorillas don’t come cheaply or easily. He also knows that, as goes “Amazing Stories,” so goes Sunday night. While CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote” currently attracts 30% of the viewers tuned in at 8 p.m., if Spielberg can lure a few of those viewers to NBC the remainder of the CBS lineup will decline accordingly; NBC, meanwhile, will have given a solid lead-in to the all-new “Alfred Hitchcock” thriller-suspense anthology at 8:30 and “NBC Sunday Night at the Movies” at 9.

It’s a strategy designed to tip the ratings balance in NBC’s favor, ideally with sufficient momentum to carry the current No. 2 network all the way to the top.

That’s why Tartikoff can smile even as he talks about his biggest series gamble to date. “You know something? If it wins the season for us, it’ll be worth it.”

After the enormous success of “E.T.” (worldwide ticket sales of $620 million in its initial outing, with more on the way as of Friday’s re-release), all three networks were clamoring for Spielberg, according to Universal’s Harris.

Universal was Spielberg’s natural starting point. The studio TV production chief who gave him his first breaks directing episodes of such shows as “Night Gallery” and “Name of the Game”--Sidney J. Sheinberg--later became movie production chief and tapped a young Spielberg to direct “Jaws.” Today, Sheinberg is president of MCA, Universal’s parent company.

An “Amazing Stories”-like series from Spielberg was first discussed with CBS. B. Donald (Bud) Grant, the network’s entertainment president, recently told The Times that he had committed to 22 episodes of the show, which were to begin airing in the fall of 1983. The project was dropped when Spielberg learned that Philip DeGuere, who had been executive producer of “Simon & Simon” for Universal, would be reviving “The Twilight Zone” as an in-house production for CBS. “Steven decided there really wasn’t room to do two shows of that type at one network,” Universal’s Harris said.

That “type” was an anthology series, similar to Spielberg’s boyhood favorites: “Science Fiction Theater,” “Outer Limits,” “One Step Beyond” and “The Twilight Zone,” as he told the NBC affiliates. He likens “Amazing Stories” to “a campfire series,” the kind of tales “parents read to their kids to put them to bed.”

Except that “Amazing Stories” is as far advanced from a campfire tale as the atom bomb is from the campfire. The series is sparing no expense to create what are essentially 23-minute movies, complete with complex special effects and top-notch production values.

On the Universal lot, where the show has been in production since March, trains crash, bombers fly, aliens cavort (in “Fine Tuning,” directed by Bob Balaban, who appeared in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), and Santa rides until 2 a.m. during a night shoot (“Santa ‘85,” directed by recent USC film school graduate Phil Joanou).

For “Round Trip,” Spielberg and the crew spent an entire morning setting up a tricky three-minute sequence that was to be shot without cuts. “There’s no way any other TV show and indeed most features would have the guts to do a shot like that,” said first-time director Donald Petrie, who directed an episode entitled “Mr. Magic.” “They wouldn’t have the time, the money or the resources.”

Time, production money, resources--those are the lures Spielberg dangled in front of movie directors such as Martin Scorsese, Irvin Kershner and Clint Eastwood to bring them to TV. (It certainly wasn’t salary: Each is receiving Directors Guild scale, which is $9,964 for a network prime-time half-hour.)

As Peter Hyams, a member of that elite group, noted: “Most of us are all a little spoiled when it comes to time and budget. The whole atmosphere that Steven created was to try to be ambitious.”

One production insider, musing about the Herculean task before the series’ producers (John Falsey and Josh Brand, late of NBC’s “St. Elsewhere,” and David Vogel, formerly with “Tales From the Darkside”) said: “How do you walk up to Clint Eastwood and say, ‘You’re spending too much time’?”

The answer is, you don’t. Sources say that one in every three episodes of “Amazing Stories” has gone overtime, requiring one to three extra days in addition to the six set aside for shooting.

By way of comparison, “Hill Street Blues,” the most complicated current prime-time series, generally films a full hour in eight days.

Spielberg’s own “Round Trip” ballooned into a one-hour episode when the first cut came in eight minutes long. The final tab on that one has been unofficially pegged at between $2 million and $2.5 million.

Also contributing to the high budget, according to Universal’s Harris, are special effects, new sets each week and “first-class people above and below the line.”

Director Kershner said of the union television crew he worked with on “Hell Toupee”: “I could take that crew out tomorrow and make a feature film.”

And like in a feature film, the directors brought in their own composers to score the episodes. Music by movie composers such as David Shire (“Norma Rae”) and Bruce Broughton (“Silverado”) complements John Williams’ “Amazing Stories” theme.

The directors are also the most prominent example of Spielberg’s relinquishing control. “He was clearly dealing with a group of directors who were used to making their own films,” Hyams said. “Everybody was encouraged to do things in their own style.”

Spielberg nonetheless had a presence on the set--even while simultaneously overseeing his feature productions: “The Money Pit,” shooting in New York; “Young Sherlock Holmes” in London; his own “The Color Purple,” until recently on a Universal sound stage, and release plans for this summer’s “The Goonies,” “Back to the Future” and the reborn “E.T.”

“All of a sudden there he is, like out of the woodwork,” Les Mayfield said. “It’s like it’s his own film school, and he drops in to visit class.”

Director Petrie, who had impressed Spielberg with a short film but had never met him, recalled that when Spielberg visited the set on his third day of shooting, “I wasn’t sure who it was. He was very unassuming. He was in jeans and long hair and dark glasses.”

But everyone contacted for this story invariably mentioned that “Steven has the final word”--on everything. He confers on all major casting decisions, reads and sometimes polishes the finished scripts (many by Brand and Falsey) and sees each cut.

Kershner said that he encountered Spielberg only once during shooting, but his final cut was sent in videocassette form to the North Carolina set of “The Color Purple” for Spielberg to view.

The official catch phrase for “Amazing Stories,” as written by Spielberg in a press release, is “the bright side of the fairy tale.” Or as one production insider calls it, “the bright side of ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ”

Spielberg, however, is a deft pitcher of curve balls when it suits his need to preserve the element of surprise. Such was the case during the making of “E.T.,” initially called “A Boy’s Life” and described as “my kids movie.” And Carolinians who don’t read Variety currently think Spielberg is in their neck of the woods to film “Moonsong.” That’s his code name for “The Color Purple,” the movie based on Alice Walker’s best-seller, which features an all-black cast led by stage star Whoopi Goldberg.

So it is with “Amazing Stories.” Though directors and stars all flatly refused to reveal plot information, conversations with them revealed that not every half-hour tapestry is embroidered with sweetness and light. Nor are all the lighthearted ones fairy tales.

Irvin Kershner said that when he first read the script for “Hell Toupee,” his reaction was “Wow! This is as crazy as anything I’ve ever seen.” He describes it as “a combination of sophisticated and very youthful humor.”

Actor Griffin Dunne said that “Secret Cinema” is “humorous and funny.” (Dunne, when asked about possible repercussions if he spoke about the plot of “Secret Cinema,” remarked: “I would live, but I think they want to keep all the plots secret, and I have to go along with them.”)

Now for the darker side of Spielberg: Commenting on “The Amazing Fallsworth,” Hyams said: “This is not lighthearted. It is definitely a thriller.”

Scorsese’s “Mirror, Mirror” is essentially about a man’s nervous breakdown.

NBC’s Tartikoff, meanwhile, guaranteed a roomful of TV critics recently in Los Angeles that they “would cry at some point” during the “Ghost Train” episode. Clint Eastwood’s love story, “Vanessa in the Garden,” directed from a Spielberg teleplay, also is reported to be short on laughs.

Remarked one source not directly involved with the production, “I’m not sure some of these things are for kids.”

That’s good . . . and bad. Though Spielberg movies such as “E.T.” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” achieved blockbuster status by way of their across-the-board appeal, his fans, along with most moviegoers, overall are young. They could be alienated by an adult-themed “Amazing Stories.”

On the other hand, the TV viewing audience skews older than movies’, so more mature themes may be necessary to maintain its loyal viewership.

NBC is counting on the series’ cutting a swath across demographic bounds. Tartikoff said he is looking for “a family viewing experience, trying to duplicate what Cosby is doing.”

That’s not an easy task. To achieve the 28 share NBC is promising advertisers (meaning 28% of all viewing homes tuned in at that time) opposite “Murder, She Wrote,” “Amazing Stories” will have to attract in a single half-hour about two-thirds as many viewers as saw “Gremlins” in its entire run in the United States and Canada, or about 27 million people. Only the top 15 of last year’s 96 rated series did that, according to A. C. Nielsen figures.

Advertising agencies in New York are predicting something a bit lower. “We’re just about right at a 25 share,” said Paul Schulman of the Paul Schulman Co., a division of Advanswers Media Programming. While Schulman said he would easily give the show a 30 share if it were on CBS after “60 Minutes,” he pointed out that “ ‘Amazing Stories’ is at a distinct disadvantage” with NBC’s low-rated lead-ins, “Punky Brewster” and “Silver Spoons.”

(Schulman also noted that no one is giving much of a chance to the ABC competition at 8 p.m., the new adventure show, “MacGyver.”)

The series already has done “very well” as part of NBC’s much-touted billion-dollar pre-season sales activity, according to Senior Vice President for Sales Robert Blackmore. Thirty-second spots for “Amazing Stories” are going for about $140,000, according to one advertising industry source. (That’s a respectable price but no higher than that for “Hitchcock” or some other new shows, the source said. “Cosby,” for its second season, is bringing in $275,000 per spot.)

With six network spots per episode, NBC is grossing slightly more than “Amazing Stories’ ” $750,000 fee. But in the world of network TV, dollars are exchanged for viewers; if Spielberg attracts less than a 28 share, the network could owe its advertisers money.

Spielberg and Universal, on the other hand, are virtually guaranteed financial success.

“Amazing Stories” appears tailor-made for the lucrative syndication market--sale to independent stations or network affiliates. The two-year commitment by NBC ensures that there will be a stockpile of products for five-day-a-week airings, and the anthology format, historically not a big draw on prime time, is ideal for viewers who haven’t the time or inclination to follow an episodic series.

Even if NBC canceled “Amazing Stories” after two years, the show would earn enough in syndication to cover the $11 million or so Universal will have paid in production monies over and above the network’s fee. Universal will then profit from packaging groups of episodes as feature films, which studio insiders say it plans to release in movie theaters overseas.

If the show is a hit, and continues for the typical five years and 110 episodes before going into syndicated reruns, Universal will gross close to $200 million.

Details of Spielberg’s personal deal are not known, but he undoubtedly will collect a healthy percentage of the syndication revenues in addition to his fees from the network for each of his credits on the show. And it is widely presumed that ownership of all “Amazing Stories” episodes will revert to him at some future point.

Even if the series is only a moderate success, syndication, theatrical release, product licensing and videocassettes eventually will reap Spielberg many millions in profits.