Minority Report - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Minority Report or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Minority Report

[lena]

The adaptation of the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick was originally planned as a sequel to Total Recall (1990) by the writers of the Total Recall movie, Ronald Shusett and Gary Goldman (later joined by Robert Goethals). The setting was changed to Mars with the Precogs being people mutated by the Martian atmosphere, as established in the first film. The main character was also changed to Douglas Quaid, the man played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The project eventually fell apart due to Carolco's bankruptcy (after, in an attempt to save itself financially, the indebted studio chose to produce the pirate adventure and huge box office bomb Cutthroat Island (1995) instead of this and Paul Verhoeven's Crusade (1999), a bloody war adventure and satire of the medieval Catholic church starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlton Heston as the warmongering Pope) but the writers, who still owned the rights to the original story, rewrote the script, removing the elements from "Total Recall". This script was eventually tossed out when writer Jon Cohen was hired in 1997 to start the project over from scratch. The only original element from the early script which made it to the final film is the sequence in the car factory, an idea that Steven Spielberg loved. This led to the original writers suing for the right to have their name in the film's credits as co-writers. Due to the extremely strict rules of the writers' guild about how much of the script must be written by a person to get the writing credit, the final ruling was that the original writers can only get the executive producer credit, and not the writing credit, which they begrudgingly agreed to.

[russell]

Steven Spielberg turned to Lexus for some ideas in designing a car for the future, but the bulk of the designs were done by Harald Belker, who has also designed vehicles featured in Armageddon (1998) and xXx (2002).

[richard]

Similarities to The Fugitive (1993): 1. Like Richard Kimble, John Anderton is framed for a crime he didn't commit/hasn't yet committed. 2. Anderton and Kimble are both recognized on the subway by another passenger, who sees his picture in the newspaper. 3. Both consult a colleague (Kathy Wahlund, Iris Hineman) to unravel a vital clue. 4. Both are pursued by a police officer (Gerard, Witwer), and at one point must navigate their way through a crowded public place (shopping mall, St. Patrick's Day Parade). 5. Kimble dyes his hair and creates a fake ID to sneak back into his place of work for vital information. Anderton has his eyes replaced to sneak back into PreCrime. 6. Both discover they were set up by a colleague (Nichols, Burgess) to cover up his own criminal activity. Both confront that man at a banquet held in his honor.

[nicholas]

Steven Spielberg used the town of Gloucester, Virginia, as a location for a portion of the film. Though the crew was in the town for a little over a month shooting, the scenes are only shown in the movie for a minute or so. The town was given no acknowledgment in the credits.

[steve]

At the climax, Tom Cruise confronts Max von Sydow in a secluded area, wearing a dark hood while presenting him with a metaphysical dilemma. This mirrors the opening of the movie The Seventh Seal (1957), in which Bengt Ekerot, playing a dark hooded incarnation of Death, confronts von Sydow's character.

[jessie]

In an interview Steven Spielberg admitted that jetpacks are not likely to ever come to fruition, but he included the technology as a tribute to the science fiction that he grew up with.

[nicholas]

The "Precogs" were all named after famous mystery writers: Dashiell Hammett, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie.

[maureen]

This is the first movie Steven Spielberg directed for 20th Century Fox. The studio, which handled theatrical distribution rights in North America, financed the film along with DreamWorks Pictures, which handled theatrical distribution rights in all other countries outside of North America. DreamWorks released the film on DVD and VHS in North America, while Fox handled DVD and VHS rights worldwide.

[frances]

When Dr. Solomon Eddie (Peter Stormare) calls his assistant, he says the following sentence in Swedish: "Greta, get the hell out of there, wipe your ass, hurry up!"

[edgar]

When Anderton and Agatha are at the mall, right after the little girl asks her mom to buy a balloon, the police are looking for them and just barely miss them. In the background of that scene, a billboard reads "See what others don't," an ability Agatha has that the police don't.

[stephanie]

Steven Spielberg: [trademark recognition] A commuter on the train looks at John Anderton over the top of his newspaper and recognizes him. This is similar to the commuters who recognized James Donovan on the train in "Bridge of Spies", some looking over the top of their newspapers at him, some glancing up from their newspapers.

[jim]

Kathryn Morris went on to star in the CBS police series Cold Case (2003) as Detective Lilly Rush.

[violet]

During the scenes that show Anderton manipulating the Precogs' visions of future crimes, the music in the background is Franz Schubert's "Symphony #8 in B Minor"--more commonly known as the "Unfinished" symphony.

[marc]

Jenna Elfman was considered for the part later taken by Kathryn Morris.

[charlie]

Apparently, Colin Farrell had a lot of trouble delivering the line "I'm sure you all understand the legalistic drawback to PreCrime methodology".

[fred]

When Gideon says that the contained prisoners are "busy, busy, busy," this may be a reference to "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "'Busy, busy, busy,' is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is."

[kyle]

Cameron Crowe: Tom Cruise's director from Jerry Maguire (1996) and Vanilla Sky (2001) appears as a commuter on the train who looks at Anderton over the top of his newspaper and recognizes him. In the same shot, the blonde woman sitting behind him is Cameron Diaz.

[kristen]

An advertisement for the film was shown during the TV3 broadcast of Tom Cruise's earlier film Mission: Impossible (1996) in New Zealand in 2002. The film had a similar plot to Minority Report (2002): government agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) goes on the run after a mission is sabotaged, and he is framed as a mole, and he sets out to find the real mole and clear his name. In this film, PreCrime bureau chief John Anderton (Cruise) is forced to go on the run when he is framed for a PreCrime murder, and sets out to stop the crime from happening (and clear his name).

[clayton]

In Philip K. Dick's original short story, John Anderton is fat and balding, not at all like Tom Cruise.