Sold! E.T. Buy Home: Screenwriter Melissa Mathison, Ex-Mrs. Harrison Ford, Back on Central Park West with $2.9 M. Buy

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Melissa Mathison is back on Central Park West, but in a much more petite place than the duplex she once shared with ex-husband Harrison Ford.

The two were married in 1983—one year after her film E.T. overtook Mr. Ford’s Star Wars as the highest-grossing film of all time. By autumn of 2000, Mr. Ford had moved out of the family’s 12-room duplex at ritzy 101 Central Park West. Things got worse from there: They signed a contract to sell the duplex for $16 million to a hedge-fund manager already living in the building, but he was rejected by the co-op board; it eventually went for $11.5 million to another buyer.

When Mr. Ford and Ms. Mathison were divorced in 2004, he kept the 800-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo., but she got a reported $85 million, plus a stake in his future earnings from films he made during their marriage.

Nevertheless, she paid last month the relatively small sum of $2.9 million, city records show, for a maisonette apartment at 50 Central Park West, five block down from her old duplex.

According to the listing with Brown Harris Stevens’ John Burger, the place has a “ballroom-sized” living/dining room with 13-foot ceilings, “original dentil moldings and ample wall space for displaying an art collection.” There’s a staff room on its own floor upstairs, plus the master bedroom suite has two walk-in closets and a steam shower.

On the downside, there’s no dark-paneled library with a wet bar like in the old duplex, and the master bedroom has two windows instead of the old seven (with five on the Park). But Ms. Mathison also wrote Martin Scorsese’s Dalai Lama picture Kundun, so she’s probably a bit Zen about petty material comparisons.

Mr. Burger had no comment, and Ms. Mathison did not return e-mail and phone messages.