Leaders of the Heaven's Gate cult that believed a comet would deliver them to heaven made a taped message 21 years ago in the apparent hope that Hollywood would take to the story.

In 1976, they recorded a "last statement" on video and made a contract that instructed it could go on sale 30 days after their "departure," the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.Marshall Applewhite and 38 followers killed themselves March 26, believing that they were shedding their "containers" - their human bodies - to hitch a ride on a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet. The spaceship would take them to the "next level" of existence.

The William Morris Agency will represent the sale of the video, which shows Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles Trusdale, who died of cancer in 1985.

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