“When Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.”
Ah, Jurassic Park. A classic. Back when Stephen Spielberg was directing as opposed to producing, Jurassic Park was a marvel of special effects for its time.
For you novel purists, studios such as Warner Bros., Columbia TriStar, 20th Century Fox, and Universal had already begun bidding to acquire the picture rights before Michael Chrichton’s book was even published. Spielberg, with the backing of Universal Studios, acquired the rights to the novel before its publication in 1990, and Crichton himself was hired by Universal Studios for an additional $500,000 to adapt the novel into a proper screenplay.
David Koepp wrote the final draft, which left out much of the novel’s exposition and violence, and made numerous changes to the characters.
During its release, the film grossed more than $914 million worldwide, becoming the most successful film released up to that time, it is currently the 15th highest grossing feature film, and it is the most financially successful film for NBC Universal and Steven Spielberg.
Michael Crichton originally conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur; he continued to wrestle with his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel Jurassic Park. Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989 while he and Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the television series ER.
Before the book was published, Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross.
For you LOST fans, you may recognize the location of the scene where the Tyrannosaurus Rex chases the Gallimimus as Hurley’s golf course (then again, I may be looking too closely). T
he American Film Institute named Jurassic Park the 35th most thrilling film of all time on June 13, 2001, and Bravo chose the scene in which Lex and Tim are stalked by two Raptors in the kitchen as the 95th scariest of all time in 2005.
On Empire magazine’s fifteenth anniversary in 2004, it judged Jurassic Park the sixth most influential film of the magazine’s lifetime. Empire called the first encounter with a Brachiosaurus the 28th most magical moment in cinema.
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