How Jurassic Park Writer Michael Crichton Was Convinced To Write The Sequel Lost World

When Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" novel sparked a furious bidding war in Hollywood before the book was even released, it was clear this was the start of a phenomenon. Steven Spielberg's adaptation changed cinema forever, ushering in a new age of digital filmmaking, and creating a dinosaur moviegoing experience that has never come close to being replicated.

Aanticipation for a sequel was through the roof. "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" was not as successful as the first film, but some at /Film believe it is the best "Jurassic Park" movie. Notably, this was the last movie in the now 7-movie "Jurassic" franchise to be based on a novel by Crichton, who notoriously never wrote sequels — except for this one. Crichton's official website explains how readers drove the author to write "The Lost World."

"From the first publication of the book, kids began to read it and they would send letters: 'What about the sequel? What about the sequel? What about the sequel?' I had not ever done a sequel before and would always say, 'There won't be one,'" Crichton wrote. "Then, as time went on, they would say, 'Well, this would be a good sequel. Here's another idea for a sequel.' Now you're reading them thinking, 'No, that's not right. No, we wouldn't do that.' Then you start thinking, 'Well, why not? Well, what would be good?'"

"Eventually there did seem to be the likelihood there would be another film and Steven seemed to have some interest in that," Crichton continued. "It's a very difficult structural problem because it has to be the same but different; if it's really the same, then it's the same—and if it's really different, then it's not a sequel."

Indeed, that is the big problem with "The Lost World," a book that was mostly done to serve as the inspiration for the movie rather than as a true and proper sequel to the original "Jurassic Park." In truth, Michael Crichton originally wrote "Jurassic Park" as a screenplay and only turned it into a book when he couldn't sell it. He even worked on the earliest drafts of the movie script before ultimately leaving the project. And at that point, Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" was drastically different from Crichton's, so a sequel would be a huge challenge — something Crichton described as "some funny intermediate territory." 

That starts with the protagonist: Ian Malcolm. Malcolm dies in the original "Jurassic Park" novel, but he is both alive and also an integral part of the success of Spielberg's version. So, when it came time to write "The Lost World" book, Crichton decided he needed Malcolm to come back to life because he is the "ironic commentator" on the action, the one that "keeps telling us why it will go bad."

Compared to "Jurassic Park," "The Lost World" feels more like a movie novelization, a story that's camera-ready. The pace is faster, the long philosophical debates of the original replaced by set pieces. That Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp developed their own ideas for a movie sequel at the same time as Crichton was writing the book made it even harder to have a cohesive story. In the end, both the movie and the novel offer very different experiences, just as the original "Jurassic Park" movie and book do. Still, they are both hugely entertaining and quintessential "Jurassic."