Sam Neill is Dr. Alan Grant, but Steven Spielberg originally wanted someone very different to play the paleontologist in Jurassic Park, none other than Harrison Ford. These bones belong in a museum!
While chatting on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Spielberg revealed that he had originally offered the role of Dr. Grant to Harrison Ford, who turned him down.
“Yes, he did, he may not remember that, but I sure do,” he said. “I wasn’t cross, I was crushed, but then Sam Neill became available and he’s Alan Grant. It now belongs to him.“
At the time, it had only been a couple of years since the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and maybe Ford wasn’t rushing to play another ologist with a distinctive hat. It’s hard to imagine anyone else but Neill in the role, and Ford likely would have been a very different experience.
Spielberg’s latest is Disclosure Day, a film which revolves around the revelation of alien life and those who would keep it secret. The first reactions have been largely glowing, but our own Chris Bumbray found the film a mixed bag, still very worth seeing.
“Is Disclosure Day perfect? No. There are some hokey ‘Shia LaBeouf swinging on a jungle vine’ moments, and at over 140 minutes it’s undeniably overstuffed. Yet it still contains its fair share of compelling sequences, and Spielberg’s sense of momentum remains second to none,” he wrote. “More importantly, it wears its heart on its sleeve, and in a world increasingly dominated by assembly-line blockbusters, that’s worth celebrating even if it could have been better.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.
Our own Michael Conway enjoyed the film a lot more. “I’m not saying Disclosure Day doesn’t have issues,” he wrote in his review. “It’s long. It has some clunky moments and a few visual effects that should have looked better. But it’s also thrilling, emotional, strange, funny, and full of that old Spielberg magic.“
Make sure to let us know what you thought of the film as well!