# Talk:Jurassic Park

I hate to be a downer but I think Numbers has the box office messed up. Jurassic Park (1993) - Financial Information (the-numbers.com) 71.81.37.38 (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

The Numbers currently says $1.058 billion. Box Office Mojo says $1.104 billion, and an editor has changed the article to use the latter.
As of 2022, there was an issue with Box Office Mojo over-counting grosses for certain re-releases and including that as part of the original gross, taking it from $913 million to $978 million. Box Office Mojo still lists the original gross as $978 million, so I assume we should continue using the overall figure provided by The Numbers.  AJFU  (talk) 16:40, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

The budget is listed as $63 million and sourced by Box Office Mojo, without any further details on its claim. In a Variety article from November 30, 1992, Spielberg claims the movie was labeled at $70 million, but actually budgeted at $56 million and even brought down to a little less than that. This is eight months before release of course. The NYTimes in 1993 claims the same budget number as Spielberg. Entertainment Weekly in 1993 alternatively claims "$60 million-plus".
I would argue a $56 million budget is a more likely to be the case than $63. Are there other sources to support/counter this? HalfBlueCheese (talk) 06:16, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

In case it's noteworthy, the New York Times article says the $56 million budget is before advertising.
I found three other articles from the month of the film's release. This article says that estimates range upward from $60 million, while also noting Spielberg's denial that it cost more than $56 million. This says $60 million, excluding the marketing efforts. This one says $60 to $70 million. Another article (January 1994) calls the $63 million figure an estimate which excludes marketing costs and talent salaries. The Numbers also says $63 million. In other words, it looks like most sources place it at more than $56 million.  AJFU  (talk) 20:53, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

In the article it says this
Another inspiration was the 1956 film Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which Spielberg grew up watching. He described it as the most masterful dinosaur film because it made him and viewers believe it was really happening.
That quote is taken out of context. When Steve Ryfle mentioned this in his book "Japan's Favorite Mon-Star" he made it seem that Spielberg wanted to do Jurassic Park because he was inspired by Godzilla. Spielberg was asked what some of his favorite dinosaur movies were as a youth and he mentioned Godzilla alongside Gorgo and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms giving his reasons why he liked each film. But he never cited any of these films as an inspiration. The book even mentions that he was looking for something all together different with Jurassic Park. So if he wanted to make something all together different from his supposed influences would the film really be considered an inspiration?
Here is the page from the book "The Making of Jurassic Park by Don Shay and Jody Duncan" where the quotes is from
https://i.ibb.co/rGWdhM95/Screenshot-20250212-101610-Chrome.jpg45.3.22.142 (talk) 13:38, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I think what is meant is that Spielberg wanted Jurassic Park to have the same realism as Godzilla (but without the movie monster carnage, thus something different). I don't know if that's enough to count as an inspiration and it's true that he doesn't outright call it one. I reworded the Godzilla info a bit (removing "inspiration") and placed it next to his "realistic" quote, as they seem to go hand in hand.  AJFU  (talk) 17:26, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

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@AJFU, you removed the information about Sean Connery being considered for Hammond because it probably originated from IMDB trivia. At the time, I figured you were probably right, but I was looking through the August 1993 issue of Cinefantastique Magazine and it had the following paragraph: 

"Neither Attenborough nor Goldblum was Spielberg's first acting choice. According to a production source, "He initially wanted Sean Connery and Kevin Costner who both turned him down.” Ironically, Connery, Spielberg's INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE star, then went on to topline Phil Kaufmann's RISING SUN, based on another Crichton bestseller, one of JURASSIC PARK’s summer rivals at the boxoffice."
Obviously, this predates IMDB trivia. Also, we don't mention anything about Costner. I think Cinefantastique is probably a reliable source, but I'm not 100% sure. Should it go in? Ladtrack (talk) 04:13, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Is there any more context about why Connery or Costner turned Spielberg down? To me it feels both trivial and WP:UNDUE if/when the most we can say about an actor is that they were "considered" for a role, and the actors being approached but turning Spielberg down is better, but not much better. DonIago (talk) 06:21, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
Well, we already have the following piece in the article: "Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss were considered for the role of Alan Grant, but were deemed too expensive. William Hurt, Harrison Ford, and Tim Robbins turned down the role, which eventually went to Sam Neill. Laura Dern was cast as Ellie Sattler, after Robin Wright and Juliette Binoche turned down offers to play the character. Embeth Davidtz, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Helen Hunt had also auditioned for the role."
This sort of thing is pretty standard for film articles, and we could basically just include their names into the casting section, and it wouldn't take too much space. I'm not so much concerned with whether it's undue as how likely it is to be true. Ladtrack (talk) 15:26, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
That source seems fine to me. Thank you for finding that. I never could find anything that predated IMDb. If there's a consensus for this being undue here, we do have character articles (like John Hammond (Jurassic Park)) that already cover casting info.  AJFU  (talk) 16:25, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
I'd be more amenable to information of this nature being added to those articles. I'm not opposing it being added here, exactly, but I think there's been an unfortunate trend on the part of some editors to try to add each and every actor of note who was even momentarily considered for a film role to the article for the film (this may have been a topic at WT:FILM), and I don't think we should go further down that path. DonIago (talk) 02:55, 7 October 2025 (UTC)