The four directors who battled Steven Spielberg for the right to direct ‘Jurassic Park’
In 1990, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel was published, and it quickly became a bestseller. Long before the book hit shelves, though, Hollywood was already interested in Crichton’s tale of science gone wrong, and the author was excited to see his vision of dinosaurs marauding around a modern-day theme park come to life. He was so excited, in fact, that he took a vastly different approach to shopping the film rights than he’d taken in the past. To his dismay, though, even though he did it to avoid a protracted bidding war, a war nevertheless took place when some of Hollywood’s biggest studios put forth a directing candidate to rival Steven Spielberg, who was always Crichton’s number one choice.
By the ’90s, Crichton had been a powerhouse writer for decades, arguably rivalled only by Stephen King. He wrote science-fiction cautionary tales like The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, and Sphere, and also wrote and directed his own movies, including Westworld and The Great Train Robbery. However, even though he’d experienced great success in Hollywood, the journey to the screen of his 1980 novel Congo still stuck in his craw.
You see, Congo was subject to a bidding war in the late ’70s before it was even published, yet this somehow didn’t translate into a genuine urge to make the movie. It was eventually made in 1995, two years after Jurassic Park, and more than 15 years after it was optioned.
Crichton was loath for this to happen again, so when it came to Jurassic Park’s rights, he made things simple: $1.5 million, take it or leave it. In May 1990, Spielberg heard about the book while chatting about a Crichton script that would later become the hit TV show ER, and he asked to read the pre-release galleys. As soon as he’d read the novel, Spielberg – a lifelong dinosaur obsessive – committed to directing the movie, and Crichton was super happy with that result. Unfortunately for him, his agency, CAA, felt differently.
Naturally, CAA didn’t want Crichton to just sell the rights to Spielberg and Universal Pictures for $1.5 million, so it encouraged other studios to put forth their own offers for the movie. This was the very thing Crichton wanted to avoid, but soon he was forced to talk with three iconic directors suggested by Warner Bros, Columbia Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. Respectively, these helmers were Tim Burton (Batman), Richard Donner (Superman: The Movie), and Joe Dante (Gremlins).
After chatting with the three candidates, though, Crichton still felt convinced that Spielberg was the man for the job. He knew Jurassic Park was going to be a difficult movie to make, but believed the Raiders of the Lost Ark director was “arguably the most experienced and most successful director of these kinds of movies.” To Crichton’s delight, the rights were sold to Spielberg and Universal only a week after going on the market, and a full six months before the novel was published.
Obviously, Crichton was 100% correct, and Spielberg was definitely the right man to direct Jurassic Park. It’s fun to imagine what the other three movies would have looked like, though. Would Burton have had stop-motion dinosaurs stomping around a gothic theme park? Would Donner have brought some of his family-friendly Goonies energy to the project, or would he have been in hard-edged Lethal Weapon mode?
Dante was the only one of the three who ever publicly spoke about missing out on Jurassic Park, telling The AV Club that he would have loved to have directed it. Interestingly, he also said, “I was a little peeved at the decision to make the villain – Richard Attenborough’s character – into kind of the hero.”
But wait, you may ask, weren’t there four directors who battled Spielberg for the right to direct Jurassic Park? Well, yes, there were! Thanks for paying attention. In 2012, none other than Titanic and Avatar’s James Cameron revealed that Spielberg simply beat him to the punch.
“I tried to buy the book rights, and he beat me to it by a few hours,” he chuckled. “But when I saw the film, I realised that I was not the right person to make the film, he was. Because he made a dinosaur movie for kids, and mine would have been Aliens with dinosaurs.” He grinned, “I’d have gone further. Nastier. Much nastier.” Oh, what could have been!
