Jurassic Park III

This article is about the film. For other uses, see Jurassic Park III (disambiguation).
"JP3" redirects here. Not to be confused with JP-3, the jet fuel.

Jurassic Park III
Film poster with a logo at the center of a skeleton of a Spinosaurus, with its mouth wide open and hands lifted. The logo's background is red, and right below it is the film's title. A shadow covers a large portion of the film poster in the shape of a flying Pteranodon. At the bottom of the image are the credits and release date.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJoe Johnston
Written by
Based onCharacters
by Michael Crichton
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyShelly Johnson
Edited byRobert Dalva
Music byDon Davis
Production
company
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release dates
Running time
92 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$93 million[2]
Box office$368.8 million[2]

Jurassic Park III is a 2001 American science fiction action film[3] directed by Joe Johnston and written by Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne, and Jim Taylor. It is the third installment in the Jurassic Park franchise and the final film in the original Jurassic Park trilogy, following The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). It is also the first film in the franchise not to be directed by Steven Spielberg, as well as the first not to be based on a novel by Michael Crichton; however, the film features characters and ideas by Crichton. Sam Neill and Laura Dern reprise their roles from the first film. New cast members include William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan and Michael Jeter. The plot involves a divorced couple who, via subterfuge, enlist the help of paleontologist Alan Grant to find their son, who has gone missing on Isla Sorna.

After the release of Spielberg's Jurassic Park, Joe Johnston expressed interest in directing a sequel, which Spielberg agreed to. Universal Pictures announced the third film in June 1998, with a release scheduled for mid-2000. A draft written by Peter Buchman was rejected five weeks ahead of filming in favor of a simpler story idea suggested by David Koepp, the writer of the previous two films. Payne and Taylor were hired to rewrite the earlier script by Buchman, who made further revisions to their draft. Filming lasted five months, beginning in Hawaii in August 2000, before moving to California. A final draft of the script was never completed during production, a circumstance Johnston considered quitting over. Jurassic Park III features a combination of computer-generated and animatronic dinosaurs. A Spinosaurus replaces the Tyrannosaurus from the previous two films as the main dinosaur antagonist.

Jurassic Park III premiered on July 16, 2001, and was theatrically released on July 18. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film was a box-office success, grossing $368.8 million worldwide against a $93 million budget, becoming so the eighth highest-grossing film of 2001; however, it is the lowest-grossing installment in the franchise to date. In 2015, it was followed by Jurassic World, which would start the sequel trilogy of the same name. Sam Neill and Laura Dern would later reprise their roles as Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler in Jurassic World Dominion (2022).

  1. ^ "Jurassic Park III". British Board of Film Classification. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013. Retrieved April 4, 2013.
  2. ^ a b "Jurassic Park III (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on May 9, 2021. Retrieved May 27, 2021.
  3. ^ "Jurassic Park III (2001) - Joe Johnston". AllMovie. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved February 27, 2021.