Tales From Development Hell: Jurassic Park IV
- cepmurphywrites
- Jul 1
- 9 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
In Hollywood, a decade is an eternity. The exact same film can be in development for that entire time and wind up radically different from how it was initially envisioned.
Such was production on the third sequel to Jurassic Park (1993). That film would eventually be released as Jurassic World (2015), but it began development soon after the release of Jurassic Park III (2001) with an original intended release date of 2005. Multiple scripts would be submitted, scrapped, and rewritten before they settled on a direction in 2012.
What if the earlier efforts had resulted in a film? What if instead of Jurassic World in 2015 audiences instead received Jurassic Park IV in 2005?
As a sequel to a popular franchise at a time when the internet was starting to become a news source in itself, especially for pop culture, there is a lot of information to be found on the progress, or lack thereof, of Jurassic Park IV. We have clear ideas of what it would have been and, perhaps more importantly, how it would have differed from what was eventually released as Jurassic World after multiple iterations. And as this was also before the Hollywood hype machine had solidified its use of the internet, many of these reports are perhaps more candid than they would be in today’s industry.
It was not the first Jurassic Park film to suffer a troubled production. Its predecessor, Jurassic Park III, likewise suffered from multiple scripts – and never had a final draft completed. Its box office success despite middling contemporary reviews convinced the powers that be, including Steven Spielberg, that there was still more money to be made on the franchise. The idea that would underpin many early versions of the fourth Jurassic film was actually one that occurred late in the production of Jurassic Park III, an idea that Spielberg felt would have made a better basis for that film: an intelligent human-dinosaur hybrid. This aspect was part of the scripts for so long that concept art of the hybrids was made by Carlos Huante and available online.
The first screenwriter hired was William Monahan, whose version saw dinosaurs escaping to the mainland. It would also bring back characters from prior films like Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) as part of a team of experts trying to stop the spread of dinosaurs. Monahan would leave the film to work on Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and John Sayles was brought in to rewrite the script. Both men’s efforts retained the intelligent human-dinosaur hybrids that Spielberg wanted to be a centrepiece.
It is from Sayle’s two drafts that we know the most details of what Jurassic Park IV would have presented on screen. It would have opened with Pteranodons attacking a Little League game in the United States, the first attack in that country but coming after numerous such incidents in Mesoamerica. An idea to stop the propagation of dinosaurs by introducing sterile specimens into the breeding population required dinosaur DNA, and the film’s new hero would recover such material left behind during the first film, only to run afoul of nefarious corporate interests. Said corporate interests would take him to their base in the Swiss Alps where he is compelled to help train a team of human-dinosaur hybrid commandos.
To say that these details, once revealed, were met with surprise would be an understatement. It’s a film of two halves: the first involving dinosaurs running rampant on the mainland and the need for a solution; the second veering off into a combination of Ian Fleming’s James Bond (the lead villain was even called ‘Baron von Drax’) and H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896). Other names connected to the film was a returning Richard Attenborough, whose character John Hammond would formulate the idea of the ‘judas strain’ dinosaurs. Keira Knightly was linked to two roles, one rumoured to be Hammond’s granddaughter. The involvement of Neill went back and forth, and at one point Laura Dern was also in talks to reprise her role as Ellie Sattler. Frank Marshall joined as producer in 2004 whilst the film was still committed to Sayle’s second script, albeit an early draft still be rewritten in September of that year. The one thing never made official was a director. Neither Spielberg nor Joe Johnston (director of III) were interested in returning, with the former preferring to remain a producer alongside Kathleen Kennedy. Alex Proyas was linked at one point but later let it be known he was not interested.
Stan Winston, whose special effects studio had worked on the prior films and had begun designs in 2003, broke the news in April 2005 that Jurassic Park IV was on hold. Per Winston, it was script issues that kept the film on hold, with Spielberg feeling none brought the right balance of both science fiction and adventure. It was put on the backburner as Marshall and Spielberg focused on other projects – including the even longer delayed fourth Indiana Jones film. Work on the film was delegated to Joe Johnston and Jack Horner, technical advisor to the series.
A year later, Spielberg had named Johnston as the director of the film, but still a script was never completed. Johnston, perhaps remembering his experience on the third film, whose lack of a script almost caused him to quit, eventually dropped out as director. Like Spielberg and Marshal, he moved onto other projects like Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). That film, like Jurassic Park IV, was delayed due to the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike. Even after the strike ended, however, both Kennedy and Marshall were doubtful that it might ever be released. Planned tie-in material even made it to market quicker than Jurassic Park IV, such as Horner’s How to Build a Dinosaur (2009), planned as a scientific companion. Seamus Blackley created a pitch trailer for a video game sequel to Trespasser (1998), despite that game’s low reputation. The sequel video game never came to pass, but its title is notable: Jurassic World.
Having successfully revitalised one dormant franchise after a long period of development hell with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver were sought by Spielberg to write an early draft of the script. Akin to comments made by Johnston in 2010, it would be the planned start of a new trilogy. This new script finally having met with approval, it was announced for a 2014 release. There were still more rewrites to come as hired director Colin Trevorrow redrafted Jaffa and Silver with his writing partner Derek Connolly. Trevorrow was hired at the recommendation of Brad Bird, who was set to direct the first film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and it was his and Connolly’s script that first used the title Jurassic World instead of Jurassic Park IV.
After another rewrite, because at that point why not, Jurassic World was finally released in 2015. It became the second highest grossing film of the year following Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), directed by J. J. Abrams rather than Brad Bird, and met with mostly, but not unanimously, positive reviews. After that many years and script versions, its writing credits were subject to dispute eventually settled by the Writers Guild of America.
Jurassic World did usher in a new trilogy, being followed by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022). Like the original films these were exercises in declining returns, both at the box office and in terms of critical reception. They also incorporated ideas seemingly drawn from the earlier drafts of Jurassic Park IV into their plots. One of the main characters in Jurassic World trains a velociraptor rescue team akin to the Sayles scripts, though this team lacks human DNA and body armour. The climax of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom takes place in an isolated mansion following an expedition to the island, albeit in California rather than Switzerland. All films feature further tinkering of dinosaur DNA than shown in the first film, with several hybrid dinosaurs appearing, but none featuring incorporation of human DNA. It’s clear from this that as much as Jurassic World might be radically different from the Jurassic Park IV that was planned in the mid-00s, some ideas were always going to be incorporated. After all, the human-dinosaur hybrid originally came from the most powerful influence on the Jurassic films: Steven Spielberg. The ideas that some balked at when the Jurassic Park IV script weren’t abandoned, they were merely refined.
Would such refinement have been possible if the film had processed with a 2005 release or only slightly delayed, rather than the decade’s delay we saw historically? Would Jurassic Park IV have been a shot in the arm for the franchise, or the final nail in its coffin?
Your writer can remember reading the details of Jurassic Park IV when they were leaked. A jaw was dropped when the human-dinosaur hybrids in body armour first appeared at the Swiss chateau where the film went to for its second half. It was not an uncommon reaction to the news, and the conspiratorial part of one’s mind might even the say the reason for the delays were due to the reaction to the plot details once released. Taken at Spielberg’s word, this was still just an early draft, and it did turn out to be a very early draft, but not in the way he probably meant. Could it have been made?
Perhaps if it had a director attached. After all, Jurassic Park III went ahead without a final draft ever being completed.
The ideal candidate for the film was perhaps always there and was even confirmed for the role at one point: Joe Johnston. He might rein in some of the more outlandish elements of Sayles script, though the human-dinosaur hybrids originated with Spielberg. It would take some convincing, but given his experiences on the prior film perhaps Spielberg settling on a script and that being finalised would be all it takes. It is unavoidable that Jurassic Park IV will be met with at least some confusion for the same elements that would be readily accepted when the franchise did return historically with Jurassic World. The hybrid dinosaur rescue team (whether part human or not) might join the interdimensional beings of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as just being one step too far in the direction of the supernatural/science fiction for this supernatural/science fiction franchise.
Such was the length of development for Jurassic Park IV that it is entirely possible the film is released at some point between 2005 and 2007, is met with mixed reviews, and Spielberg seeks out Jaffa and Silver to do a treatment for Jurassic Park V around the same time they were contacted historically. Getting Jurassic Park IV doesn’t necessarily mean that Jurassic World never happens. That was the nature of the industry once work began in earnest on the version that would become Jurassic World. Films playing off nostalgia for long dormant series broke out in 2015. In addition to Jurassic World and The Force Awakens there was also Mad Max: Fury Road and Terminator Genisys. The existence of Jurassic Park IV would not change the underlying trends, only the exact films made and when. The two highest-grossing films of that year were entirely dependent upon the audience memory of the earlier iterations that they adored when first released. The Jurassic films especially have relied on this and this alone, so much so that it almost encouraged a reappraisal of Jurassic Park III as being the only one of the six (soon to be seven) to do its own thing.
With Jurassic Park IV in addition to III, that reappraisal might actually become more widespread. There would be two examples of films doing something beyond the standard “scientists mess around on behalf of corporate interests, things don’t turn out how they planned”. Though the Sayles script does feature this plot, it does so in a way radically different from the other films, except what made it into the Jurassic World films. Much as the best thing that happened to the reputation of the Star Wars prequels was the Star Wars sequels, it is possible the best thing that could happen to Jurassic Parks III and IV is the existence of Jurassic World films based purely on nostalgia for the first, without even their own slight variations that originated in the early plans for the fourth.
We might be at the stage where after lacklustre returns on the Jurassic World films that the next plays on ideas from the third, like the Spinosaurus, or the fourth, like the team of mercenaries retrieving dinosaur genetic material from a forbidden island. Speaking of which, Jurassic World Rebirth, out this week, will see a group of mercenaries trying to retrieve dinosaur genetic material and the return of the Spinosaurus. It even features a mutated, failed dinosaur experiments that bears a passing resemblance to some of Carlos Huarte’s concept. No sign however of dino body armour nor an alpine chateau.
Despite being very visibly grounded in the filmmaking trends of the 2020s, it may have taken the fourth Jurassic film 10 years to get made, but after 20 years Jurassic Park IV might make it to cinemas yet.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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