We Were Mere Moments Away from James Cameron's 'Jurassic Park'

When a book becomes a bestseller, every movie studio in the world will probably bid on it. It'll also get the attention of huge filmmakers. Well, for almost a decade, Michael Crichton was writing those books. His stories mix elements of adventure and science fiction, and the general public loved them. 

Turns out, so did Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. 

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When Crichton's landmark book Jurassic Park came out, it was an extremely hot property. And both of those filmmakers were racing to secure the rights to make the movie.

This week, at the opening of a Titanic Museum in Belfast, Cameron told an audience that "I tried to buy the book rights, and he beat me to it by a few hours." 

The "he" here refers to Spielberg, whose film Jurassic Park is an all-time classic. 

'Jurassic Park'Credit: Universal Pictures

Still, it's fun to think about Cameron's version. Cameron seems to not think he missed out on making a classic, lauding Spielberg's vision and saying, "But when I saw the film, I realized 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, and that wouldn't have been fair." 

I cannot imagine the R-rated survival movie akin to Aliens, but with dinosaurs attacking a group of people. I wish Universal would let Cameron take a stab at that today. 

Cameron continued, "Dinosaurs are for eight-year-olds. We can all enjoy it, too, but kids get dinosaurs and they should not have been excluded for that. His sensibility was right for that film, I'd have gone further, nastier, much nastier."

It's true that Spielberg and writer David Koepp changed the novel, which was a cynical story about playing god, and made something that captured the wonderment of dinosaurs, and the horror of the hubris of resurrecting them. Cameron seems like he would have leaned into the violence of the novel and done something closer to a horror movie. 

Let me know what you think in the comments!