20 facts you might not know about 'Minority Report'

A sci-fi movie based on a story by Philip K. Dıck? What a shocker! Of course, Dıck’s work has led to several movies at this point, both when he was still alive and since his death. Back in 1956, he published a novella called “The Minority Report,” which was loosely adapted into this film.

When The Minority Report was first optioned, the plan was for it to be a sequel to another movie based on a Dıck story, Total Recall. The plan was to bring back Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid and everything. However, Total Recall studio Carlco fell into bankruptcy in 1996 after years of failing to fund the film. The rights were lost, and the sequel never happened.

Miramax bought the rights to the story in 1997 and got novelist Jon Cohen to take a pass on the screenplay. This version was to be directed by Jan de Bont. The Dutch director would end up getting a producer’s credit, but Spielberg has said that de Bont didn’t have anything to do with the production of his movie.

Originally, the director and actor wanted to work together in a vacuum. They were looking for a project that might work. Spielberg had almost directed Rain Man, but instead, he went on to do Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Finally, after over a decade of trying, Spielberg and Cruise got to collaborate on Minority Report.

Cruise was the one who brought Minority Report to Spielberg. Spielberg’s first thought? The screenplay wasn’t good enough. So, Cohen did another pass. This time, Spielberg said the screenplay was up to snuff, so he agree to direct.

Spielberg wanted to keep the budget of Minority Report under $100 million. (He would fail by a hair, as it rose to $102 million.) Part of that was that Spielberg and Cruise took zero salary for the film. Now, that isn’t to say that they did it for free. No, the two each got 15 percent of the box-office gross, meaning if the movie did well, they would bring in a ton of cash.

Minority Report was set to get into production, but then Cruise was too busy on Misson: Impossible II, so it got delayed. Then, Spielberg had his own delay. After the death of Stanley Kubrick in 1999, Spielberg made it his primary focus to finish A.I. That pushed the film back further.

As one of the biggest directors in the world, you would think Spielberg would be able to get almost any actor he wanted. Well, he wanted Matt Damon for Witwer, Meryl Streep for Dr. Hineman, Ian McKellen for Burgess, and Cate Blanchett for Agatha. None of them are in the final film, though Damon had signed on before dropping out. Javier Bardem also passed on playing Witwer.

These days, Colin Farrell is a movie star. However, 2002 was the year he broke out in Hollywood, as he starred or costarred in three films, including Minority Report. Prior to 2002, some had seen him in the war film Tigerland, but he was not a known name when he was cast.

It seems like Witwer is going to be the villain of Minority Report, and that could have been the case. In one draft of the script, Witwer is indeed the primary antagonist. However, in Scott Frank’s pass at the screenplay, which was substantive enough to get him co-writing credit from the WGA, Witwer was turned into being a good guy and something of a red herring. This is actually in line with the version of Witwer in the Dıck story.

Blink and you may miss them, but two directors and one true movie star are subway passengers in Minority Report. Cameron Crowe, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Cameron Diaz all have uncredited cameos.

Fiction or not, Spielberg wanted some legitimacy to his future. In 1999, he convened a think tank of experts to help him create a plausible version of 2054. This led to the creation of a “2054 bible,” which was 80 pages of expert ideas of the future world.

Part of the realistic future idea from Spielberg went to the cars of the film as well. The director went to Lexus and asked them to come up with a concept car for the movie. This gave us the Lexus 2054. They came up with a car that ran on fuel cells and had then-non-existent safety features. A concept version was made in real life as well, which went around to auto shows for a while.

Digital technology had been getting more and more ingrained in the world of film. You didn’t need to tell Spielberg that, given that he directed Jurassic Park. However, Minority Report made history as the first film with an entirely digital production design.

In Dıck’s “The Minority Report,” the conspiracy is based around a general who wanted to discredit PreCrime so that he can get more funding for the military, which is not found in the film. There’s another big difference, and that’s in the character of John Anderton. In the novella, he’s out of shape and old. In the movie he’s, well, Tom Cruise.

The director wanted Minority Report to have a “noir feel.” To get inspiration, he watched films like Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon, and Asphalt Jungle. In order to desaturate the color of the movie, it was overlit and then the negatives were bleach bypassed to give the movie its final look.

You have a huge movie star and the biggest movie director to ever live. That makes marketing easy, right? Well, the marketing campaign for Minority Report was really keen on you seeing this movie, first and foremost, as a Cruise action movie. The fact that Spielberg directed this film was actually downplayed at the time. Why? Because A.I. had come out and been a bit of a disappointment.

While Minority Report debuted a little lower than expected at the domestic box office, it was still the No. 1 movie in America. It would make $132 million domestically, but $358.4 million worldwide. That made it the 10th-highest-grossing movie of 2002. Also, if we’re doing our math ride, that would mean Spielberg and Crusie both made over $53 million on this movie.

Now, a film like Minority Report isn’t likely to earn much in the way of, say, acting Oscars, but technical Oscars could have been in the mix. However, the movie ended up with only one nomination, for Best Sound Editing. It did not win.

Over a decade after Minority Report hit theaters, FOX decided to turn it into a series. Set 10 years after the movie, only Agatha the Precog is in the film and the show, and she is played by Laura Regan and not Samantha Morton. The show only lasted one season.