It’s funny to read Ethan Anderton’s take on some new concept art for an abandoned Jurassic Park 4 where human-dinosaur hybrids were apparently expected to be involved. Anderton writes, “Yeah, that sounds like an interesting idea for some kind of movie, but not Jurassic Park 4.” Yeah, but does it sound interesting for The Amazing Spider-Man?
Apparently the abandoned project was written by William Monahan (The Departed) and John Sayles (The Spiderwick Chronciles) and involved “a secret genetics lab [getting] involved with cross-breeding humans with dinosaurs, giving them problem-solving intelligence and the ability to fire weapons and fight crime, but controlled by human authorities.”
So much of that sounds like what happened to Rhys Ifan‘s character in The Amazing Spider-Man, all the way down to his turning New York City police officers into lizards… though that part of the storyline was disregarded after they turned into lizards so we don’t know if they actually fought crime afterward or just sat around pulling each other’s tails off only to watch them grow back with childish glee.
The concept art comes from a Reddit user who also points to this script review at Ain’t It Cool News from 2007 to help confirm the images are from what they say they are. The review comments on the creations saying, “They have super-sensitive smell and hearing, incredible strength and speed and pack-hunting instincts, and they have modified forelegs, lengthened and topped with more dextrous (sic) fingers, as well as dog DNA for increased obedience and human DNA so they can solve problems well.”
It’s all funny to me because it’s like the Lizard in Amazing Spider-Man became a living, breathing embodiment of this script and the film determined such a bad idea must be stopped. Turns out both things happened, but that won’t stop them from making The Amazing Spider-Man 2. After all, don’t you want to know what happened to Peter’s parents?
I’ve included two more pieces of the alleged concept art below and you can check out the rest here.
As for Jurassic Park IV, last we heard it’s moving forward and Rise of the Planet of the Apes screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver were penning the script and it apparently involves no government-developed, weaponized dinosaurs. Who knows if it will ever get made.
