James Cameron would have made a terrifying, R-rated Jurassic Park

Back in October of 1990, Alfred A. Knopf published the sci-fi thriller novel Jurassic Park, which was written by Michael Crichton, an author and filmmaker who had previously brought the world the likes of The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere, Westworld, Coma, The First Great Train Robbery, Looker, and Runaway, among other things. Not surprisingly, the film adaptation rights to Jurassic Park were quickly snatched up by Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures – but another filmmaker who made an attempt to secure those rights was James Cameron, who says he would have made Jurassic Park into a terrifying, R-rated movie… which, he admits, would not have been the right approach to the material.

Spielberg’s PG-13 Jurassic Park has made over $1 billion at the box office. Cameron is quite familiar with box office totals on that level or beyond, but he doesn’t think his take on Jurassic Park would have been as successful as Spielberg’s. Speaking with Empire magazine, Cameron said (with thanks to World of Reel for sharing the quote), “[Spielberg] was the right guy to make it. Not me, because I would have made it too terrifying and R-rated. It would have been Aliens with dinosaurs.“

Cameron previously said, “I tried to buy the book rights and he beat me to it by a few hours. … [Spielberg] made a dinosaur movie for kids, and mine would have been Aliens with dinosaurs, and that wouldn’t have been fair… His sensibility was right for that film, I’d have gone further, nastier, much nastier.”

Spielberg directed Jurassic Park from a screenplay by Michael Crichton and David Koepp. In the film, paleontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler and mathematician Ian Malcolm are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park’s mastermind, billionaire John Hammond, assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, B.D. Wong, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards, Samuel L. Jackson, and Wayne Knight star.

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