Writing In 1988,
Patrick Read Johnson came up with the idea for
Dragonheart and pitched it to producer
Raffaella De Laurentiis a year later. Johnson proposed the film's concept to De Laurentiis, describing it as "
The Skin Game with a dragon in it...or
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Dragon". He wanted "the idea of a dragon and a knight conning villages for money" because he thought the concept was "not only funny, but kind of sweet". According to Johnson, before the film was ever called
Dragonheart and had the element of the shared heart, it began with the premise of Johnson's manager Melinda Jason also managed screenplay writer
Charles Edward Pogue, who previously wrote for
David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly and was working on adapting
A Princess of Mars for
Disney. When meeting for drinks in
Bora Bora, Johnson
pitched the idea for
Dragonheart to Pogue, and he agreed to work on the film. Johnson already had the story's beginning and end in mind but not much of the middle, so he and Pogue collaborated on the script, developing the characters and the Old Code while working the Arthurian myth into the story.
Casting During his time location scouting in Spain, Johnson created the character of Draco. He and Pogue shaped it for
Sean Connery, a client of
Creative Artists Agency (CAA) at the time, who was Johnson's only choice in mind to voice Draco. Johnson wanted to "animalize" Connery's voice by giving it "deep resounding rumbles, and make the vocabulary such that it didn't sound quite human". Instead of how it is heard in the final film, "it wasn't just gonna be Sean Connery's voice coming out of the dragon". After completing location scouting, CAA sent numerous English and Irish actors to meet with Johnson for the Bowen role, including
Gabriel Byrne,
Timothy Dalton, and
Pierce Brosnan. English actresses sent for the part of Kara included
Elizabeth Hurley and
Patsy Kensit. Johnson then met the then-up-and-coming
Liam Neeson, and the two hit it off, with Johnson noting how Neeson could be both brooding and funny, but much to Johnson's chagrin, the studio refused to believe Neeson could pull off the action hero role since he had just completed
Darkman. Wanting a big-name lead actor for the film, Universal sent the script to actors like
Tom Hanks,
Kevin Bacon, and
Arnold Schwarzenegger as potential Bowen candidates. Other actors considered to replace Neeson included
Harrison Ford,
Mel Gibson, and
Patrick Swayze, Cohen's first choice for Bowen before
Dennis Quaid accepted the role. With the castings of Quaid as Bowen and Meyer as Kara, Johnson said: Johnson also claimed that Cohen shooting the scenes with
Lee Oakes as young Einon first greatly hindered
David Thewlis's performance; Oakes spoke with a thick
Northern English accent, forcing Thewlis to mimic the child actor's accent. As the Creature Shop did tests for Draco,
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) did
CGI tests for
Jurassic Park. Universal believed waiting would be better as the CGI technology could benefit
Dragonheart. Additionally, according to Johnson, Universal saw the Creature Shop test footage as the pretext for the final film's quality. The studio went behind his back, trying to remove him from the project and give it to an A-list director since Johnson only had one film to his name at the time. Raffaella De Laurentiis tried to negotiate the budget to one the studio would accept at around $21 million. Still, Universal wouldn't take an amount lower than $23 million and would ironically end up spending roughly triple the amount on the film. When Universal ended his contract, Johnson was only paid and given credit for writing the story and acting as executive producer. For his desired direction for the film, Johnson said: Then
Richard Donner was approached as Universal sought a replacement director. Donner spent roughly six months working on the film before moving on to other projects. The studio declined
Kenneth Branagh after deciding the amount he asked to star in and direct the film was too expensive. De Laurentiis hoped to make
John Badham, Rob Cohen's then-partner, interested in handling
Dragonheart and sent him the script; according to Cohen, Badham "didn't respond" to the material. After working with De Laurentiis on
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story in 1993,
Rob Cohen agreed to take over as director, and Universal announced his attachment to the film in January 1994.
Creative direction Since
Jurassic Park was released and Universal Studios sought to have Draco made with CGI like the dinosaurs, there had to be script alterations per Draco's allowed screen time based on the film's budget. As a result, Draco would appear less often than in the original script, which included a sequence with Bowen flying around on Draco's back. According to Pogue, the film production became troublesome after Rob Cohen's hiring; Pogue felt Cohen "had neither the poetry in his soul nor the panache to bring
Dragonheart to the screen". One of Cohen's first changes to the film was setting it during the 10th century
Dark Ages rather than the sophisticated "Robin Hood-era" 12th century
Middle Ages. He felt the possibility of dragons existing during the mostly unrecorded period would be more believable and appropriate for his grittier vision. While streamlining the script with Pogue, they removed one of Bowen and Draco's scams as Cohen felt that doing three would be too expensive and reduced the number of battles. Other changes to the script under Cohen's direction include: • Reducing Queen Aislinn to "a glorified
bit player". • Changing the unseen old scarred dragon from male to female. • Cutting a scene between Gilbert and Bowen by a riverbank where they discuss their goals and motivations. Also removed were scenes showing the developing love story between Bowen and Kara, which the final film only alludes to without proper resolution. For example, Kara and Bowen declare their love for each other, during which Bowen asks Kara for her "lady's favor". Kara reveals Einon raped her and therefore has nothing to give Bowen, so Bowen kneels and gives her a chaste
kiss on the hand. Cohen reportedly removed the scene because he felt Kara should be more of an action-oriented character swinging axes around and didn't believe she would make "sappy speeches". Pogue however said that Cohen cut the scene because he couldn't get the desired performance, which involved having Kara and Bowen in an intimate embrace instead of the hand kiss, and conflicted with Dina Meyer. This issue also made Cohen cut a scene with the peasant army gifting Bowen a suit of armor they make for him, overwhelming Bowen with emotion, which Pogue considered Dennis Quaid's best scene. Then Cohen's desire to showcase Draco as the film's main attraction caused the deletion of vital "
connective tissue" scenes, making the film feel inconsistent and rushed. Pogue also said the film suffered because Universal aimed to turn
Dragonheart into a kids' movie as the dark and weighty elements were either removed or
dumbed down. As Johnson said: "They messed with the script and started adding things like, 'Ready or not here I come! It's Draco!' I mean, we never had that stuff in our script! All this cheesy crap that just juvenilized the picture". To stay within the budget Universal was willing to shell out with Johnson directing, the developers approached Jim Henson's Creature Shop to create the Draco through traditional means. The dragon model was done within eight weeks, including a quarter-scale puppet and a full-size head that could speak with real-time lip sync through camera speed manipulation.
MCA Records released the film's soundtrack album on May 28, 1996, containing 15 music tracks. ==Release==