When
Steven Spielberg's film
Jurassic Park was released in 1993, his friend
Joe Johnston became interested in directing a potential sequel. While Spielberg expected to direct the sequel, he agreed Johnston could direct a possible third film. After the release of the second film in May 1997, Spielberg was busy with other projects; when asked about the possibility of a third
Jurassic Park film, he responded that it would give him a tremendous headache "just to think about it". Spielberg had no intention of returning to the
Jurassic Park series as a director, stating that the films were difficult to make. He had been satisfied with directing the previous films, and felt that the third film needed someone new to take over. After the release of the second film, Johnston again asked Spielberg about directing a
Jurassic Park sequel.
Pre-production Universal Pictures announced the film in June 1998, with Spielberg as a producer.
Michael Crichton, who wrote the
Jurassic Park novels, was to collaborate with Spielberg to create a storyline and write a script, Spielberg initially devised a story involving Dr. Alan Grant, who was discovered to have been living on one of
InGen's islands. According to Johnston: "He'd snuck in, after not being allowed in to research the dinosaurs, and was living in a tree like
Robinson Crusoe. But I couldn't imagine this guy wanting to get back on any island that had dinosaurs in it after the first movie".
Craig Rosenberg, who previously wrote and directed
Hotel de Love, began writing the first draft of
Jurassic Park III in June 1999. Rosenberg's draft involved teenagers becoming marooned on Isla Sorna, Johnston was announced as the film's director in August 1999, with Rosenberg still attached. Production was expected to begin in early 2000. The previous films were shot in Hawaii, and the island of
Kauai was the preferred filming location for the third film, although no decisions would be made until the finalization of the script.
Buchman draft Peter Buchman was hired to rewrite Rosenberg's draft, and did so going into early 2000. Buchman's draft involves dinosaurs causing a series of mysterious killings on the mainland, followed by an investigation. The script also has a parallel story that involves Alan Grant, Billy, and a family crash-landing on Isla Sorna. Also on the tour is Paul's bodyguard Cooper, and Susan Brentworth, Paul's business associate and girlfriend. The plane is forced to land on the island after hitting an unidentified object. As it takes off again, it hits a
Spinosaurus and crashes. The story would then alternate between the island and San José. The hearing would reveal that dinosaur attacks have taken place in various mainland locations, ranging from the
Baja California Peninsula to Panama. Finch becomes concerned that the dinosaurs are breeding, thus posing a worldwide problem. Near the end of the draft, the U.S. government sends in fighter jets to bomb the island and destroy its dinosaur population. In the process, Roby is spotted by a pilot and he and his family are rescued from the island. However, Grant refuses to leave and, in his final scene, retreats into the jungle, incorporating Spielberg's initial idea. Filming locations were scouted for this draft, In March 2000,
Maui,
Hawaii, reportedly had been chosen instead of New Zealand.
Casting and further rewrites Sam Neill signed to the project in June 2000, reprising his role from the first film as Alan Grant. Neill turned down a role in
Peter Jackson's
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) to reprise his role in the film. Neill was happy to return, as he felt his performance in the first film could have been better. Hawaii was confirmed as a filming location for a three-week shoot, and filming overall was expected to take 18 weeks. Filming was scheduled to begin by August 2000, with a projected release in July 2001.
William H. Macy originally turned down his role due to scheduling conflicts, so filming was delayed by a month. Macy had been working with
Laura Dern on the 2001 film
Focus, and she urged him to accept the role in
Jurassic Park III. Johnston felt that Buchman's draft was too complicated, particularly in getting Grant back to an island of dinosaurs. When screenwriter
David Koepp held discussions with Johnston, Koepp suggested the simpler "rescue mission" plot. Koepp had written the previous two films, but had no involvement in writing the script for
Jurassic Park III. which had been storyboarded and budgeted. Some set-building had already begun, as well. At the time, Utah's
Dinosaur National Monument and a military base at
Oahu were being considered as filming locations.
Alexander Payne and
Jim Taylor began rewriting Buchman's script in July 2000, Payne and Taylor were hired to improve the film's characters and story, as the script primarily consisted of action. They were surprised to receive the writing offer, as the project differed from past films on which they had worked, but Universal had been impressed with their rewrite on the studio's film
Meet the Parents. Johnston said: "I didn't want to see them as a couple anymore. For one thing, I don't think they look like a couple. It would be uncomfortable to still see them together. And Laura Dern doesn't look like she's aged for the past 15 years!" and
John August did uncredited work on it, as well. Writing credit ultimately went to Buchman, Payne, and Taylor. Johnston described the final film as simpler, faster-moving, and more intense than the earlier films.
Principal photography began on August 30, 2000, Macy criticized the project during filming. Johnston said that filming ultimately went over schedule by a few days, primarily because of weather and unexpected technical issues, although he was satisfied with how the schedule eventually turned out considering these issues. Macy also noted that executive producer Spielberg was not seen on set, despite a chair bearing his name that was always present, with Macy saying, "You don't know if it's a threat or a promise!" While Macy was impressed with the
Jurassic Park III footage, he criticized the project for starting without a finished script: "The script has been evolving and being rewritten as we go, and what you want to say is, 'Who launched a $100 million ship without a rudder, and who's getting fired for this?' But that's the way it goes. That's the way they make these movies... big deal. I think someone should be shot, but I'm not in charge". Johnston said the actors went through an uncomfortable production shoot and that Macy may have simply made the critical comments on a bad day of filming. As the film approached its release, Macy said: "It was about the most amazing thing I've ever done in this business". Actor
Alessandro Nivola criticized the film after its release, saying in a 2002 interview: "It was like the only part I've ever done that just had nothing for me to latch on to, character-wise. [...] It was kind of maddening". The actors were frequently bruised during filming. Filming in Oahu included
Heeia Kea Ranch. By that time, John August had been hired to do the uncredited script revisions, which were followed by additional work from Buchman. Scenes were filmed at Center Bay Studios in Los Angeles at the end of the month. Other filming locations in California included a rock quarry in
Irwindale, while the interior of the InGen compound was filmed in a warehouse located east of
downtown Los Angeles. Dern's small role as Ellie was filmed in a day. Scenes involving a
pterosaur aviary and a
T. rexs attempted attack on a river raft were featured in the first novel
Jurassic Park (1990). Although these scenes were absent from the novel's film adaptation, they were added into
Jurassic Park III. The film's
Spinosaurus attack on the boat is a modified version of the scene from the novel. At Falls Lake, located on the Universal lot, Verreaux and his team built a giant rock wall as part of a set that would depict InGen's
Pteranodon aviary. Three months were spent laying foam blocks that were molded by hand to form jagged rock. A team subsequently built a 10-story, three-sided scaffold covered with netting to simulate the aviary. The aviary scene was filmed in early December 2000. The set was then redecorated for the nighttime sequence in which the
Spinosaurus attacks the boat. The scene involved rain and fire, and took nine nights of filming. The scene depicting the satellite phone in
Spinosaurus feces was filmed using of oatmeal. lent the production team two
Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk helicopters. In a November 2000 draft of the script, the
U.S. State Department was to send in a helicopter and Ellie to rescue the characters, with Ellie explaining that she arrived thanks to a good friend at the department. This ending was not considered exciting enough, resulting in the final ending with the Marines and Navy coming to rescue the characters, while excluding Ellie from coming to the island. In the final film, Ellie's husband is an employee of the State Department, although his involvement in rescuing the group is not specified. The new ending was written in December, and
the Pentagon lent two
Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawks to the production, as well as four
assault amphibious vehicles and 80 Marines. Production returned to Hawaii in January 2001 to film the ending on Kauai's Pila'a Beach. The film's longest rough cut without credits was around 96 minutes long.
Creatures on screen features prominently in Jurassic Park III''. As with the previous films,
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) provided dinosaurs through computer-generated imagery (CGI), while
Stan Winston and his team provided animatronics. The animatronics were more advanced than those used in previous films, Puppeteers worked together to create the
T. rex,
Spinosaurus, and
Velociraptor movements. Winston's team took roughly 13 months to design and create the various practical dinosaurs. an animal which had a distinctive sail on its back. Johnston said that "a lot of dinosaurs have a very similar silhouette to the
T. rex ... and we wanted the audience to instantly recognize this as something else". Horner hypothesized that
T. rex was more of a scavenger, while
Spinosaurus was a true predator. Winston and his sculptors created an initial
Spinosaurus design, and Horner then provided his scientific opinion. Winston's team began with a 1/16 maquette version of the
Spinosaurus, before creating a 1/5-scale version with more detail, leading to the creation of the final, full-scale version. The process took 10 months. The fight between the
Spinosaurus and
T. rex was one of the last scenes shot for the film, and the two animatronics were put to extensive use for the fight. A
T. rex animatronic from the previous film was re-skinned for its appearance in
Jurassic Park III. An early script featured a death sequence for the
Spinosaurus near the end of the film, as Grant would use the resonating chamber to call a pack of raptors which would attack and kill it. Because of new discoveries and theories in the field of paleontology, several dinosaurs are portrayed differently in this film from in previous ones. Discoveries suggesting velociraptors were feathered prompted the addition of quill-like structures on the head and neck of the males in the film. Horner said: "We've found evidence that velociraptors had feathers, or feather-like structures, and we've incorporated that into the new look of the raptor". '' in the film. Spielberg insisted that Johnston include
Pteranodons, which had been removed from the previous films for budget reasons, with the exception of a brief appearance in
The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The film contains more than 400 effects shots, about twice the number featured in the two previous films combined. Most of the shots were for the fight between the
T. rex and
Spinosaurus, and for the
Pteranodon aviary sequence. A list of creatures seen on-screen are: Spinosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, Compsognathus, Parasaurolophus, Corythosaurus, Pteranodon, Ceratosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops ==Soundtrack==