8 Things You Might Not Know About Michael Crichton’s ‘Jurassic Park’

Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park roared its way onto shelves in 1990 and quickly spawned a multi-billion dollar franchise: Just three years after the book was published, Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation captured the world in its jaws, and the series hasn’t let go since (the seventh film in the series, Jurassic World Rebirth, is scheduled to hit screens this summer). But although the original film eclipsed its source material in terms of popularity, Crichton’s book still made quite the splash in its own right. To celebrate the novel’s 35th anniversary, here are a few facts you might not know about the iconic dinosaur tale.

1. Jurassic Park started out as a screenplay.
2. Early test readers hated Jurassic Park.
3. The film rights were sold before the book was even published.
4. Jurassic Park quickly became a bestseller.
5. The novel’s cover is based on a T. Rex skeleton in New York’s Natural History Museum.
6. Some of the characters and scientific ideas in Jurassic Park were pulled from real life.
7. Jurassic Park inspired scientists and boosted the field of paleontology.
8. Jurassic Park is the only book that Crichton wrote a sequel for.

Jurassic Park started out as a screenplay.

Although best-known as a novelist, Michael Crichton was no stranger to the world of film. He’d written and directed a handful of movies, including 1973’s Westworld (which just so happens to be about a technologically-advanced theme park malfunctioning) and 1978’s Coma. He penned Jurassic Park as a screenplay in 1983, but it was very different from story that was eventually unleashed on the world: It revolved around a lone grad student managing to clone a single pterodactyl. But Crichton didn’t know where the story should go from there: “The problem always with these creatures is that once you have them, then what do you do with them? I mean, what is the story after they exist?”

Crichton was also dissatisfied with the setting—“You wanted the thing that never happened in history: people in the forest and swamps at the same time as dinosaurs”—and needed to figure out why anyone would fund research into resurrecting dinosaurs. A few years later, he realized how to solve all of these problems: A theme park setting. However, he thought that it was unlikely that “anyone would ever make this story into a movie, because it would be very expensive,” and decided to write it as a book instead. Steven Spielberg, of course, proved him wrong.

Early test readers hated Jurassic Park.

Crichton had a small group of people he trusted to give feedback on his early drafts, and they all felt the same way about Jurassic Park. “People didn’t just dislike it, they hated it,” the author explained to Publishers Weekly. He tried rewriting the story a few times, but could never seem to get it right. Finally, someone identified the issue: “You’ve written it from the point of view of a kid, and I didn’t like that. I wanted it to be a story for me, an adult.” Crichton switched to a mostly adult perspective (the third-person narration allows for multiple character POVs—including a couple of kids) and that fixed the problem.

The film rights were sold before the book was even published.

At the end of 1989, Crichton had a meeting with Spielberg to discuss a screenplay—which would eventually become the hit TV show ER—during which he was asked what else he was working on. He said that he’d just finished writing Jurassic Park and sent Spielberg an early copy. Spielberg read it in just one day and told Crichton he was interested in making the film adaptation. “I’ll give it to you if you guarantee me that you’ll direct the picture,” Crichton replied.

But then Crichton’s agency put the rights on the table for other studios, despite the fact that, in Spielberg’s words, “Michael had kind of promised me the book privately.” Instead of a traditional bidding war, Crichton was asked to consider four offers from different studio and director combos. All were priced at $1.5 million so that money wouldn’t cloud what was best for the movie. Along with Spielberg, Richard Donner, Tim Burton, and Joe Dante were also put forward. In May 1990—six months before the book hit the shops—the author decided to stick with his original decision and sell the rights to Spielberg. Crichton was also paid an additional $500,000 to help write the screenplay.

10 Key Differences Between the Jurassic Park Novel and Movie

Crichton and Spielberg made a few tweaks when adapting Jurassic Park for the big screen. Here are a few of them. WARNING: Spoilers ahead!

Jurassic Park quickly became a bestseller.

Along with the buzz over Jurassic Park’s movie rights, Crichton was already a big name in the publishing space thanks to books like The Andromeda Strain (1969), The Great Train Robbery (1975), Congo (1980), and Sphere (1987)—so it’s no surprise that his dinosaur novel received a lot of attention. Jurassic Park first hit The New York Times best seller list on December 2, 1990 [PDF]—less than two weeks after it was first published. The hardcover spent 14 weeks on the list [PDF] and became the 18th bestselling book of 1990, despite having been released so late in the year.

The novel’s cover is based on a T. Rex skeleton in New York’s Natural History Museum.

Graphic designer Chip Kidd was asked to create a cover for Jurassic Park that was as iconic as the movie poster for Jaws (1975). “There’s no way in a million years that I am going to ever be able to do that,” Kidd thought to himself.

He tried out different dinosaurs, but while visiting the American Museum of Natural History for inspiration, he had to admit that “the T. rex sort of commands the room.” He started sketching the imposing skeleton—known as 5027—and then noticed that the backlit lighting meant that he was really drawing its silhouette. Kidd thought that this image perfectly fit the book, because it brought “to mind somewhere in between the remains of the animal and the animal itself.”

From that idea—and with some help from a drawing of 5027 from Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution (1988), which Kidd found in the gift shop—the book cover was born. A dark T. Rex skeleton—which is so big that it wraps around to the back cover—stands in stark contrast to a white background. It’s safe to say that Crichton was a fan; after seeing it he sent a fax that simply read, “Wow! F***ing fantastic jacket.” The filmmakers of Jurassic Park agreed and licensed the image for not only the poster, but also for use throughout the movie as the park’s logo.

Some of the characters and scientific ideas in Jurassic Park were pulled from real life.

Crichton was upfront about having based some of his characters on real people. Paleontologist Alan Grant was modeled on Jack Horner, whose fossil findings were crucial to understanding the social behavior of dinosaurs. Crichton also drew on the work of paleontologists Robert Bakker, John Ostrom, and Gregory Paul. For Ian Malcolm, Crichton took inspiration from physicist Heinz Pagels and his ideas on chaos theory were further filled out thanks to the work of Ivar Ekeland and James Gleick. Hammond doesn’t have a real-life counterpart, but Crichton wrote him as “the dark side of Walt Disney.”

The idea of dinosaur DNA being extracted from preserved mosquitoes was also pulled from real scientific research. In 1982, George O. Poinar, Jr., and his future wife, Roberta Hess, published a paper about a 40-million-year-old fly that had been mummified in amber. Three years later, Charles Pellegrino published an article in which he theorized that DNA could be extracted from such insects and used to recreate prehistoric animals.

Jurassic Park inspired scientists and boosted the field of paleontology.

There might be no Alan Grant without Jack Horner, but the real-life paleontologist is just as indebted to Jurassic Park for the direction of his career. In addition to serving as the paleontology consultant on all seven Jurassic Park movies, Horner also cites Crichton’s books and the movies as the inspiration behind his attempts to create a dinosaur. Extracting dinosaur DNA failed and his current project involves genetically modifying a chicken in an attempt to create, in his own words, a “chickenosaurus.”

Both the book and movie are also credited with having inspired a generation of paleontologists who went into the field after being dazzled by Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs. Not only that, but both mediums of the story also led to greater public interest in paleontology, which led to vastly more funding and jobs. In a 2018 interview, paleontologist Steve Brusatte said that “there is a really, really good chance I wouldn’t have my job today if the book was never written, if the movie was never made.”

Jurassic Park is the only book that Crichton wrote a sequel for.

Crichton was initially against writing a sequel to Jurassic Park because of the challenge that sequels pose: “It has to be the same but different; if it’s really the same, then it’s the same—and if it’s really different, then it’s not a sequel.” But it wasn’t long before he caved to the demands of not only fans of the book, but also of Spielberg, who was keen to get on with filming the sequel. The Lost World—which follows a team exploring a second dinosaur-filled island—was published in 1995 and the film adaptation came out two years later.

Discover More Facts About Books: