What Never Was: The John Sayles Jurassic Park IV Script Outline

John Sayles is an independent script writer, director, and novelist who'd been in the business for a good two decades when he was approached in the early 2000s by Universal to do the script for the fourth Jurassic Park movie. It wasn't really a bad pick, as Sayles had done nature horror films before with "The Howling" (1981), "Alligator" (1980), and the cult-classic "Piranha" (1978) as well as science-fiction with "Clan of the Cave Bear" (1986) and "Apollo 13" (1995). He was also familiar with Universal because he had been a writer for the earlier drafts of "E.T".

Taking up the slack of the previous writers, Sayles supposedly largely redid what he had on hand already from previous writers. I'm not quite sure of which happened, but I'm inclined to think this was the case because it almost seems like two movies or more sandwiched together. The infamous "Homocraptors" were from an earlier script and got reworked here. Reason I bring this script up in particular? Because this almost became the full film. Those rumors of them preparing to go into pre-production during 2004-2005? This was the script they were most likely running with. In addition to the completion of the script vouching for its near use, while obviously this script didn't become a film it had left a lot of trace elements that wound up in Jurassic World.
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So we open up with a flock of pterosaurs attacking a park and baseball game and we learn from exposition afterwards from Hammond and the news that more and more dinosaurs and pterosaurs are migrating off the islands and spreading out of control.  Hammond, who at this point is the most sued man in history, calls in a former soldier-now mercenary Nick Harris. Forever proving himself a man of changing nature he's gone from industrialist to naturalist to mad scientist. He wants to create a 'Judus' strain of dinosaurs, hyper aggressive breeders that will out-compete the normal creatures but are sterile. And because amber trade is now illegal and cloning dinosaurs is very illegal, he needs the embryo remains from Nedry's can from the first movie. Thus he sends Nick to Isla Nublar.

Isla Nublar meanwhile has been under charge of the Grendel corporation, a Swiss corp spoken for by Wilheilm Speiler, and all the dinosaurs have supposedly been eradicated. Yep, they announce every dinosaur on the island has been gunned down. No Rexy to be seen. Nick arrives in a very Mission Impossible manner (script's words, not mind) and takes all of 5 minutes to find Nedry's wreak and skeleton (even cracking a "You dropped a few pounds." one-liner), then the can. Then Grendel mercs pop out all around him as apparently their group has been looking for and wants the can as well.

And then the "Diggers" show up. Apparently some species are more stubborn and managed to evade being killed. These Diggers are a new species we've never seen before, basically being described as black bodies, red eyed raptors (Excavaraptors as the script calls them) with mole-like forelimbs and shorter hind limbs. The Grendel mercs go the way of the red shirts and Nick has an extended chase with a very persistent Digger. He manages to get away after a long sequence through the jungle and InGen ruins but the sea plane (manned by a guy named Darwin no less) wins a Darwin award when a kronosaurus outta-nowhere wrecks the plane, kills Darwin, and scares the Digger off. Nick is found by the Grendel helicopters and has to go with them.

In a brief scene of them stopping by the mainland, we see Nick stash the can away before being taken to the Grendel corp's base. It's a castle in Switzerland. Brace yourselves folks, we're getting into full blown Bond villain territory.

Nick meets the geneticist on hand, Maya, and finds the castle has a small stock of dinosaurs. They got an Ankylosaurus, several Chlamydosaurus Dilophosaurus, and several Deinonychus who've been genetically modified to have bits of Ornitholestes (dexterity), dog (obedience), and human (intelligence) DNA. Granted they barely look any different from normal raptors based off the descriptions, so just imagine them looking like the male Nublarensis raptors from TLW. They each have a X- 1, 2, 3, 4, and 4; or as we'll later know them as Spartacus, Achilles, Hector, Perseus, and Orestes. Each one is outfitted with a regulator wired into its brain, indicated by a box just behind their ear about the size of a cellphone. Joyce, the overseer, basically tells Nick they need him to train the Deinonychus. Yep, we've reaching one infamous point that carried over into Jurassic World.

Say hello to the prototypes of the Raptor Squad.


To Be Continued-

So Nick gets forcefully recruited by Joyce, who basically is our Vic Hoskens analog, to train the Deinonychus for use as a mix of elite soldiers and suped-up attack dogs; citing Cortes' use of war hounds on terrified Aztecs. Grendel Crop. wants to use fully armored raptors as the ultimate shock and awe weapon. Nick at first, logically, refuses. After a test run scenario for two of the raptors is done with a staged ambush, Nick tries to break free and fails. This and the excitement of the test seems to make the raptors seem to run wild for a moment by Maya, whom we see it the other half of our Owen prototype alongside Nick, manages to calm them down via her actions and by Grendel Corp. injecting chemicals (like seratonin) into their heads to affect their temperment. They manage to get the raptors to stand down before they can attack the two test shooters and Nick is brought to the higher ups.

So we now get to meet the leader of Grendel Corperation, and if you needed any indication these were the bad guys, his name is Baron Von Drax (the 23rd). For the sake of hilarity, I'm going to refer to him as Cobra Commander. Cobra Commander tells Nick three things.

1. They used Cobra Comander's blood in the human contribution to the Deinonychus additives (Nick cracking a joke that he can see the resemblance)
2. They need the embryos to get fresh DNA to start up a breeding program as all the Deinonychus are sterile males. (This is a big plot hole I'll get too later)
3. They want Nick for the training as while Maya has some sway over the Deinonychus (we previously got to see her calm down another in its cage), they need someone in military to do the real training and Nick happens to fit the bill.


Nick basically calls him a crazy jack***. We cut to a scene with Nick and Maya. Nick already knows something is up with Maya as she previously passed him a secret note saying "Do NOT Give Them The Embryos!", so he knows something is up with her. We get her backstory that she was a large carnivore (lions mostly) trainer who's father was a Jurassic Park employee. She was in on the secret and had been promised that for her birthday, he was taking her to see dinosaurs at the park. Never happened but she still has the ticket. She accepted the Grendel job because it was her only real chance to interact with dinosaurs. While they're talking, Joyce comes in and manages to convince Nick to join in because the raptor's first operation is actually a rescue mission. An associate of Cobra Commander's young daughter was kidnapped and is being held hostage. Where she is being held is in a very bad spot for police to do a thing since its too big an area to search in time and because the kidnappers killed the last person they ransomed, that option won't work.

Traditional methods are out the window, so the unorthodox just might work. The Deinonychus could get into the air in moments and sniff the girl out in seconds, too quick for the kidnappers to react. A video of the kidnapped little girl saying she's terrified and wants to go home convinces Nick that this insanity just might work.

What follows next is what I can best describe as a dinosaur marine training montage with Nick drilling the raptors through stunt runs, getting them to recognize and not harm what smells like the little girl, and christening them with the Greek warrior names I mentioned before. I am not joking about this being a training montage either, the script specifically says we get military themed catchy background music throughout this sequence. We also learn in this the Deinonychis can communicate via ultrasound and seemed to have figured out humans can't hear them without equipment. They can also change the color of their scales like TLW Novel Carnotaurus and JW's Indominus.

Meanwhile Cobra Commander gets reports on the training while shooting priceless vases with a crossbow.

The training seems to work and the Deinonychus succeed in a mock up test, attacking the armed kidnapper dummies and not harming the girl mock-up. Nick wants more testing but Joyce, taking it as a full success tells them their time table has been moved up and Nick isn't happy about it. He's going to be on the ground with the Deinonychus, something that worries Maya. She says that if just gives them the embryos, he can go free. Nick, wanting to try and save the girl, refuses while watching the raptors.