During an interview with The Huffington Post, James Cameron has revealed that he attempted to acquire the movie rights to Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel Jurassic Park, but ultimately lost out to Steven Spielberg by a matter of hours.
Cameron went on to reveal that, in hindsight, Spielberg was a better fit for the material, and that his version would have been very different to what we got with the 1993 blockbuster.
“When I saw the film, I realised that I was not the right person to make the film, he was,” said Cameron. “Because he made a dinosaur movie for kids, and mine would have been aliens with dinosaurs, and that wouldn’t have been fair. Dinosaurs are for 8-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.”
Spielberg’s Jurassic Park was an enormous hit, grossing $914 million during its original theatrical run, making it the highest-grossing movie of all time… until James Cameron’s Titanic in 1997.
Jurassic Park has so far spawned three sequels – The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World – with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom set for release in June and another instalment recently announced for 2021.
Cameron meanwhile is currently hard at work in production on his four Avatar sequels, the first of which is set for release in 2020.
