JP3 on Your Mobile Device?
Interesting report this morning from Paris, France -- Joonas has been attending the annual Mobile Electronics Fair, and noticed this interesting banner at the booth for In-Fusio, a French company that develops games and other entertainment products for WAP-enabled cell-phones and PDA's. According to Joonas, "In-Fusio [will] launch 2 JP3 related mobile games before the movie comes to theaters... One game will be WAP based, and another one will use some brand new technology... [These] JP3 games will first be seen in France and other places in Europe, [and] maybe later in US and Asia."

Buy the DVDs, Get a JP3 Ticket
The LA Times is reporting that Universal Home Video is planning a promotion around the release of JP3 that is oddly similar to their current The Mummy DVD promotion -- people who buy the JP or TLW DVDs will receive a free pass to the new film. (Thanks Mark and MovieHeadlines.net)

Behind the Scenes of JP1
Bob from Hawaii Movie Tours wanted to let everyone that has has reached into his archives, posting "never before seen photos" from the behind-the-scenes filming of the first Jurassic Park, which makes me wonder.. is Bob really Steven Spielberg?! The pics are located here.

April 23, 2001

First JP3 Figures Spotted -- On Ebay
'Darth Maul' was the first to notice there are two Ebay auctions of JP3 Hasbro action figures, this one, the Eric-with-Pteranodon, and this one, with the military-general-and-t-rex. The seller is in Hong Kong, which may explain how they have them already, but these figures should be appearing in stores eventually...

More Merchandise
Jon and JP3HQ cons yet another mention out of me, as they posted some more of their big list of JP3 merchandise we can expect in the coming months. Adding to the list is bottled water, "cake decorating supplies", JP3 Chips'A-hoy cookies and Cheese-Nips, JP3 "spin pops" (for lazy kids), and plastic eggs with candy. Fun!

April 22, 2001

"I think I can safely say this will be the best Jurassic Park," [Neill says.] While Steven Spielberg - his exec producer and the director of the first two Jurassics -- might disagree, Neill is in a position to know. The actor reprises his role from 1993's first dino-fest, which launched the most lucrative franchise in Universal history (total worldwide box office: $1.5 billion). This time, Neil's paleontologist finds himself staring down the monstrous reptiles after his plane-chartered by a curious couple (Macy and Leom) and their son -- crash-lands on the mysterious island.

The sequel was a serious priority for the studio, which desperately needed a summer tent pole and kick-started shooting last fall in Hawaii without a finished script. "We had to go back to Hawaii in January. It wasn't planned," admits Johnston (October Sky), who adds that the third installment is much darker than the previous films. "We didn't have an ending that we liked the first time we were there."

Well, that's one story. "We just had the ending missing? Joe is being graceful," Leoni says. "We started in Hawaii with no ending, the middle a little up in the air, and the begnning, uh, pretty solid." Which led to a lot of on-the-fly rewriting. Go's John August and, reportedly, Election's Alexander Payne did uncredited polishes, and even Macy took a crack at scripting a scene. But, hey, the first two films were more about stomp than Stoppardian wordplay.

So any new creatures in that blue-screen bag o'tricks? "There was a dinosaur discovered around the turn of the century then [destroyed] during the bombing of Gemany in World War II: spinosaurus. It was bigger than T. rex," the director says. "So you know we have to have those two gigantic dinosaurs do battle, right?" Naturally. And if the promise of a scaly mama bad enough to take on the "Stone Cold" Steve Austin of prehistory isn't enough to have audiences salivating for thirds, Leoni is already working on damage control. "If the thing bombs, I'm going to blame it on the dinosaurs," she laughs. "I've got plausible deniability, man."

1925 Lost World on DVD
Here's a new DVD that might be of interest to JP fans, a new edition of the first film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" -- this version is newly restored, with 10 minutes of "discovered footage" and a new musical score. The Digital Bits just reviewed the new disc, you can read that here.

April 21, 2001

April 20, 2001

About the Trailer, Johnston
Actionadventure.about.com posted an article about the "Universal Studios Summer Celebration", an event which apparently took place recently and where the JP3 trailer was screened for members of the media. Here's the scoop, which gives some pretty detailed info about the trailer.. If you don't want to know, don't highlight the text!:

"Producer Kathleen Kennedy introduced the film telling the story of how director Joe Johnston had wanted to direct Lost World, but when Steven Spielberg decided to direct that, he promised part III to Johnston. Jurassic Park III boats more dinosaur shots than the first two films combined, according to Kennedy, and the trailer suggested a few of the new film's surprises.

The trailer opens with shots (Spoilers!!!!) of the abandoned lab. Paul Kirby (William H. Macy) then hires Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) to guide his family on an aerial tour of the island, but then decides to land against Grant's advice. The ensuing shots of chaos show dinosaurs communicating with each other, setting traps for the humans, and the discovery of a large bird cage. The sounds of a pterodactyl coming home close the trailer."

Larger Finale Pics
Bob from Hawaii Movie Tours sends word that his images from the Hawaii re-shoot are back online (they were gone for awhile), including some larger, higher-quality versions of what looks to be the finale of the film. They can all be found here. (Warning: Watch out for spoilers!)

Trailer 2:25, on May 1?
No word as to where they got this information, but Corona's JP3 Page reports the highly-anticipated JP3 trailer is 2 minutes, 25 seconds long. In other trailer related news, Harry mentioned something about the trailer this morning, pointing out that Universal tends to send trailers to the entertainment news shows the Tuesday before it arrives in theaters, which means we might see the trailer on TV Tuesday, May 1. More on this as I get it. (Thanks 'JP Animal Control' and 'Tcsr84')

New Auctions
Here's another JP3 Bob Bag to add to your JP3 Bop Bag collection -- this one featuers a scientifically-incorrect T-rex (Or is it a spino?) in 3-D. Here's auctions where you can get a "inflatable chairs and game table" and a press slide (of the plane publicity shot). Thanks Gregg.

Buy a Spino Tooth
Garrett noticed you can buy a real life, honest-to-gosh Spinosarus tooth at this website. 'Tango' adds that the place he works for sells Spino teeth as well, The Dinosaur Store.

April 18, 2001

I've said this a bunch and I'm not exaggerating, it was the best of the best doing the best they've ever done. The puppetry, Stan Winston's puppets, in this room you couldn't tell that they're not alive. They are so complicated now. They blink. You know this little thing down here [on your neck] where your heart beats? They've got that. They have a little bladder in there and when the thing's been running, it goes fast. When it's just standing there, it goes slower. The eyes have 19 movements or something like that on these raptors. They were alive. There's a scene where one of them comes up (spoiler) and sniffs Tea Leoni from head to toe and there's nine guys standing over there operating the thing but you couldn't watch them. You can only watch this raptor because you had no idea what it was going to do.

What was one specific stunt you were involved in? I'm on a crane. First of all, it was raining from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie, and that rain was cold. I'm on a crane and the dinosaurs - this was a Spinosaurus who is the baddest ass in the jungle from this point on -- T-rex, forget it -- Spinosaurus is the man and he knocks over this crane, and so the shot was they're pulling the crane out of frame while I'm hanging onto the thing. No one knows how it happened but we were going to do three in a row. Rather than re-setting each time, they were gonna lift me out of frame, bring it back, lift me out of frame again, bring it back. Well, they lifted me out of frame, they said bring it back and the thing went boom [mimics crashing down] like that. Luckily I had a safety line that went up through my arm but I fell off of the thing immediately. Then the safety line caught. I had a tattoo on my chest for a while after that.

Roberts Up Against JP3
Make sure your girlfriends' are away from the computer -- This morning's Variety is reporting Sony has moved their new Julia Roberts romantic comedy America's Sweethearts up against JP3, on July 20. A Universal rep, however, is not concerned. "I presume Sony thinks they're counterprogramming," they said. "Good for them, and we're not worried." Sony had previously scheduled "Final Fantasy" to go up against JP3, but moved the date back in October.

More Merchandise
Sneaky Jon -- he didn't post his whole list of official JP3 licenses last time (Story), and adds a few more clothing products to the mix. Look for JP3 footwear, slippers, pajamas, boxers, t-shirts, sweatshirts, fleeces, swimwear, "wind wear", and "lounge pants", all coming soooon....

JP3 PS2 Game Release Date
'Dr. Dinosaur' noticed that a release date list of PS2 games at SonyWeb.com indicates that the eagerly anticipated JP3 PS2 game by Konami is currently slated for release November 14th, 2001, about 4 months after the release of the film.

April 17, 2001

SAG Strike May Endanger JP3 Promotion
Here's an interesting article from yesterday's edition of Variety, which indicates that because of the looming strike by the Screen Actors Guild, press junkets for several films -- including JP3 -- are being squeezed into the final week of June, before the SAG deadline on the 30th of the month. As the article says, "the union has still not decided whether actors would be able to promote [films] during a strike."

April 16, 2001

Advanced Mummy Screening
'TheNforcer01' wanted to let everyone know that you can sign up to win an advanced screening of The Mummy Returns (which will have the JP3 trailer before it) at the Entertainment Weekly website. This really works, as I saw Gladiator two weeks before it came out last year from EW.

Official JP3 Site Updated
If you haven't noticed by now, the official JP.com site has been updated with the message "Prepare for the ultimate dinosaur encounter... experience the carnivorous world of Isla Sorna!". A little more info from a coy Universal source says that they are planning to have "something" up on May 4th, and "if you liked the Grinch site, you'll love what we have in store for this."

April 14, 2001

Leoni agreed to do Jurassic without seeing a script first, instead basing her decision to join the cast on director Joe Johnston’s enthusiasm and her own enthusiasm for working with Johnston and stars Sam O'Neill [sic] and William Macy. "Joe just said, ‘Listen, you’re a mom who’s lost her 12 year old son, on an island with dinosaurs. What do you think?’ And I thought, ‘cool,'"

"For the most part, we were face to face with some of the most terrifying puppets," reveals Leoni. "I mean, these guys make Chucky look like child’s play. And that made the acting easy, because when you have a - whatever it is - 6 ton, 1700 horsepower, 30-foot high creature coming at you along a track at 18 MPH, you find the fear. You find the fear quite easily, actually. ... These puppets are so [real]; it’s odd to even say lifelike because there’s no reference, really. No one has ever seen a moving dinosaur, but I would credit Stan Winston and his team with vivid and real imagination because you can look into each creature, even in the same species, [and see] a different personality. It wasn’t like this one’s green, or this one’s taller or this one has horns--there were different shapes to the faces, and some seem to have more smiles."

Leoni believes that, as with its predecessor 8 years ago, Jurassic Park 3’s story and characters will reel viewers in -- and that’s the key to making an effects-heavy genre film great. "We’ve got a great kid in this film - Trevor Morgan," she says. "Bill Macy and I are playing a recently divorced couple who has lost their child. Half of that is funny and the other half isn’t--how we are going to do this, coming from being divorced and whatever that brings to the table and how we’ll have to come together in order to get our son back [and all of that]."

In spite of the fear-inducing dinosaurs on set, "everyone brought their own sense of humor and we played with it," reports Leoni. "I had so much fun. At times the dynamic between [Bill and I], we were just playing. And then there is Michael Jeter, who is hysterical in this film."

"Joe Johnston is such a great guy. He’s very calm; nothing rattles him," Leoni says with respect. "Here he is on this enormous film, spending millions of dollars, and I never saw his feathers ruffled, I don’t think once."

People Picks up Macy Comments
This week's People Magazine (April 23rd) features a short blurb on the now-infamous "ship without a rudder" comments made by William H. Macy back in December. They get a few facts incorrect (the comments were originally appeared in an article in the NY Post, not the IMDB), but did mention this site (!) and provided a quote from Joe Johnston refuting Macy's comments.

One More Crew T-Shirt
I guess when you work in Hollywood you get a lot of t-shirts. Gregg Truscott points us to this Ebay auction, which seems to be a yet another shirt worn by the film crew, this one with the "Panavision Super Techno" (a crane) appearing on the back.

Vince Vaughn Arrested
In the weird-but-true file, 'Tango' sends along this E! Online story, which says that TLW star Vince Vaughn, screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, and Steve Buscemi were involved in a bar fight in North Carolina Thursday night, and Vaughn and Rosenberg were arrested. All apparently were in Wilmington while shooting "Domestic Disturbance" with John Travolta. While the article seems to suggest the actors were provoked by another man, both are due in court June 4.

[News from March 25th through April 12th]