Jurassic Park 3 Trivia

This article includes Jurassic Park 3 Trivia from pre-production to casting and production.

Pre-Production

• Originally, Jeff Goldblum was going to reprise his role as Ian Malcolm but he injured his leg a few days into filming and dropped out of the film, saying his character wasn’t important to the script.
•  In the original scripts, the story had a Baryonyx as the main dinosaur instead of the Spinosaurus. Both creatures essentially look the same though the Baryonyx was a little smaller and had no fin. Director Joe Johnston wanted a creature that looked quite different to the rest and so the Spinosaurus and its fin was selected.
• One of the original scripts was about a group of teenagers trapped on Isla Sorna.
• Some of the scenes in the movie were borrowed from the first Jurassic Park novel including the boat on the river sequence and the pteranodons in the aviary.
• A draft of the script dated September 25, 2000 had revisions one by John August but he wasn’t credited on the film.
• Author Michael Crichton worked with the screenwriters for a few days trying to come up with a new story for Jurassic Park 3 but he left as he couldn’t come with a satisfactory story.
• In the shooting script, the character Udesky was called Ordesky.
• In the original script, Billy was killed but Alessandro Nivola and director Joe Johnston changed it to bring him back at the end of the film.
• In the original script, the Spinosaurus was originally going to be killed by a pack of Velociraptors.
• Another ending in the script had it attacking the marines on the beach.

Casting

• Stellan Skarsgård, Steve Buscemi, and Tony Shalhoub were considered for the role of Cooper.

Production

• Filming for the film began before the final script was finished.
• Towards the end of the movie, when the Spinosaurus attacks Amanda Kirby (Téa Leoni) in the water and tries to grab her, she was injured during the scene.
• William H. Macy said the animatronic Spinosaurus had a 1,000-horsepower motor and it could turn its head twice the force of gravity, with the tip of its nose moving at a speed of over 100 miles per hour.
• The Spinosaurus was the largest animatronic ever built weighing 12 tons and was operated by hydraulics. This allowed it to operate underwater.
• The crew used 250 gallons of oatmeal to simulate Spinosaurus droppings.
• The first shot of the dig site was real footage of Jack Horner’s excavation filmed in summer 2001.
• When Billy designs a velociraptor’s voice thing with the “rapid prototyper”, it is real technology. It is able to sculpt parts and objects in three dimensions using schematics on a computer.
• The plane that takes the characters to the island is a Hawker-Beechcraft King Air 200.
• After the release of Jurassic Park and The Lost World, several discoveries and theories were made about dinosaurs. Some of these concepts made it into the film including putting feathers on male velociraptors. There is still some debate about how much feathers they had and what kind they had. Studies suggested that the feathers they had were similar to modern day birds rather than what was seen in the film and covered their entire bodies.

Other

• After the survivors escape the Spinosaurus, Dr. Grant asks Billy what type of dinosaur it is. Billy says a Suchomimus or Baryonyx due to the large snout. This was an in-joke as many fans thought the creature would be one of these when the movie’s logo was revealed.
• Both final shots of Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park 3 are similar. When Grant looks out of the helicopter at the end of the first movie, he sees a group of pelicans flying next to the chopper. The ending is similar in the third movie except it’s a group of Pteranodons flying beside the plane.
• when Ellie is talking to Dr. Grant, she mentions getting a quote from Jack Horner for her book. Jack Horner is a paleontologist and he was also the consultant on all three movies. The character of Alan Grant is actually based on Horner.
• When Grant and Billy enter the bar for dinner with the Kirby’s, you can see a Jurassic Park pinball machine in the background.
• Sam Neill requested, as part of his contract, that the the Australasian premiere of Jurassic Park 3 take place in his hometown of Dunedin, New Zealand.
• Billy has a lucky backpack just like Sarah Harding in The Lost World.
• The large weapon used by the mercenaries was actually a Barrett M82A2 Bullpup sniper rifle which was developed for the US military.
• Dr. Grant’s brown truck is actually based on Jack Horner’s vehicle. It was reportedly very difficult and time consuming to find an exact match of Horner’s vehicle to use in the film.