Harrison Ford Was up for Alan Grant in Jurassic Park? Empire Strikes Back Got Him the Role? Could Indy 5 Still Happen?

A lot of interesting news, tidbits and information came out of the panel Q&A from Raiders of the Lost Ark from the Hero Complex special screening. One of the biggest pieces of news was no denial on a possibly Indy 5.

Moderator Geoff Boucher asked Ford if he’d be interested in returning to the character for a fifth film in the series, to which Ford replied, in his trademark dry delivery:

“Maybe a fifth, but I ain’t going to Mars. Next time we get a script for Indiana Jones, I’d be delighted to play the character. Each time we meet him, we wanted to advance the audience’s understanding of the character, not just by putting him in adventures, but by learning something about him…that’s what led to the meeting of his father [in The Last Crusade], played by Sean Connery, and his son [in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull], played by Shia, and bringing Marion back.”

So how did Ford get the job playing the iconic role of Jones? It wasn’t as simple as playing Han Solo. Tom Selleck was originally cast in the role but dropped out due to his commitments on Magnum P.I.

At the Q&A Spielberg mentioned that George Lucas invited him to his house to see an early cut of The Empire Strikes Back.

“After [the screening of The Empire Strikes Back] was over, I said, ‘We’ve found our Indiana Jones.’ And George said, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘That guy right there. Han Solo.’ And George said, ‘yeah, he’s a great actor, but he’s identified as this character now in Star Wars.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but he’s an ACTOR!’ George had never thought about that, but then he said, ‘yeah, that’d be great’.”

Ford responded in kind talking joking that Spielberg only calls him when he wants him to play Indiana Jones. Spielberg than revealed a major bomb for fans of his Jurassic Park series.

“You know who I offered Jurassic Park to? This guy. Alan Grant, Jurassic Park, right here.”

Richard Dreyfuss was always a name that came up when Alan Grant was talked about in casting but never Ford. I would have loved Ford in that movie.

The last bits of the Q&A revolved around the Blu-ray release of the Indiana Jones series as well as E.T. As you can imagine give Lucas’ changes and modifications…again to the Star Wars trilogy, Spielberg touched on that “hot topic”.

“For myself, I tried this once and lived to regret it. Not because of fan outrage, but because I was disappointed in myself. I got overly sensitive to [some of the reaction] to E.T., and I thought if technology evolved, [I might go in and change some things]…it was OK for a while, but I realized what I had done was I had robbed people who loved E.T. of their memories of E.T.”

All in all it seems the event was pretty awesome for those in attendance and just shows how this classic continues to live on in the hearts and minds of the fans but also the ones who made it. Thanks to our friends, Geektyrant for all the wonderful coverage. Please go over and read all of there more extensive thoughts and coverage on the screening, especially their review.

Now AICN is reporting that Jurassic Park III director Joe Johnston, who’s next project is Marvel’s Captain America film, chatted with them about the film while on the set of the Wolfman ( his most recent film).

“There is a great story for the fourth one that I would be interested in getting involved with and it’s nothing like the first three. It sort of takes the franchise off in a completely different direction, which is the only way I would want to get involved.”

“We’ve done that and it’s been done three times. Why would anybody go back to that island? It was hard enough to figure out the second and third reason for them to go, but it would take it off in a whole other trilogy basically, but when it gets to that level it’s sort of about studios and Steven’s thing and who knows. I think we are at that point where we are due for another one if we are going to do it. They had what four years between them? 1992… 1996 or 1997, and then 2001, so we are past due. I don’t know, but we will see.”

Sounds like everything we have ever heard about this project which just seems to be in development hell and rightfully so because of what Johnston said, you have to do something new that hasn’t been done before. I wrote a treatment for a new trilogy that revolves around a “new” company, Biosyn (Dodson’s company – the guy that bought off Nedry in film one) had bought out Ingen and succeeded where they had failed by bringing the research to a whole new level combining nanotechnology and genetic engineering. You have the mixture of life-size dinos like we love but then there are these dinopets that people own.Anyway I not going to write anymore because its not that bad  of an idea and it brings everyone back as well in a creative and non-cheesy way. It is sort of the Dino-geddon route though.

Anyway I doubt we will see a Jurassic Park IV anytime soon but one thing I am sure if they did another one and Spielberg produced i am sure it would be 3D and such and maybe filmed like Avatar, that would be interesting.

We just got news from Michael Crichton.com that the “ER” creator and “Jurassic Park” author died tuesday at the age of 66. Crichton passed away in Los Angeles after his private battle with cancer. The death according to his family was unexpected. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Crichton family.

Michael Crichton is one of Fused Film’s favorite authors giving us classics like Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, The Great Train Robbery, The Andromeda Strain and many more.Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois, to John Henderson Crichton and Zula Miller Crichton, and raised in Roslyn, Long Island, New York. He has two sisters, Kimberly and Catherine, and a younger brother, Douglas.

According to his biography, he attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude in 1964. Crichton was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970. In 1988, he was Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While in medical school, he wrote novels under the pen names John Lange and Jeffery Hudson. A Case of Need, written under the latter pseudonym, won the 1969 Edgar Award for Best Novel. He also co-authored Dealing with his younger brother Douglas under the shared pen name Michael Douglas. The back cover of that book contains a picture of Michael and Douglas at a very young age taken by their mother.

His two pen names were both created to reflect his above-average height. According to his own words, he was about 2.06 meters (6 feet 9 inches) tall in 1997. Lange is a familyname in Germany, meaning “tall one” and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th century dwarf in the court of Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of England.

Crichton has admitted to having once, during his undergraduate study, plagiarized a work by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. According to Crichton the paper was received by his professor with a mark of “B-”. Crichton has claimed that the plagiarism was not intended to defraud the school, but rather as an experiment. Crichton believed that the professor in question had been intentionally giving him abnormally low marks, and so as an experiment Crichton informed another professor of his idea and submitted Orwell’s paper as his own work.

Crichton was married five times and divorced four times. He was married to Suzanna Childs, Joan Radam (1965-1970), Kathy St. Johns (1978-1980) and Anne-Marie Martin, the mother of his only child, daughter Taylor Anne. At the time of his passing, Crichton was married to Sherri Alexander.

Here is a list of movies that were adapted from his novels – we obtained this list from Wikipedia.org