James Cameron Nearly Directed Jurassic Park — Why He Says It Had to Be Spielberg
James Cameron nearly took the reins on Jurassic Park, but says Steven Spielberg was the right call — the only filmmaker who could nail the balance of wonder and fear.
James Cameron says Steven Spielberg beating him to Jurassic Park was the best possible outcome. And he is not being coy about it. He tried to snag the rights back in the day, lost by a matter of hours, and now freely admits his version would have been way meaner, louder, and very much not for kids.
What Cameron said this week
In a new chat flagged by DiscussingFilm on Nov 22, 2025, Cameron told Empire that Spielberg was the right hire and he would have taken the movie into hard-R territory. The guy behind Avatar and Titanic is not pretending otherwise:
"He was the right guy to make it. Not me, because I would have made it too terrifying and R-rated. It would have been Aliens with dinosaurs."
The near-miss that changed everything
Cameron has said before that he tried to buy the rights to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Spielberg got there first. As Cameron put it, Spielberg beat him to the book rights by a few hours. He talked about this on stage at the Titanic Museum in Belfast and explained why that loss ended up being a win for audiences: after seeing the finished film, he realized Jurassic Park needed to be something kids could actually watch. In his words, dinos are catnip for 8-year-olds, and it would have been wrong to shut them out. His own take, he admits, would have gone further and nastier.
Why Spielberg was the right fit
Spielberg has that rare balance: awe, dread, and a beating heart. He made people terrified of sharks without a fancy budget on Jaws. Give him cutting-edge tools and real money, and you get Jurassic Park, which delivers the T. rex and raptor chaos while still making you care about the people trying not to get eaten. It is not mindless horror. It is meticulously engineered suspense wrapped around characters you actually like. That tone is the whole ballgame here.
How it played out
- Cameron tries to buy Jurassic Park from Crichton, but Spielberg secures the rights first, by hours.
- Spielberg makes Jurassic Park, and it becomes one of the most celebrated films ever.
- On Nov 22, 2025, Cameron reiterates to Empire that Spielberg was the right choice and his own version would have been an R-rated 'Aliens with dinosaurs.'
The road not taken
It is fun to imagine the Cameron cut: more violence, more intensity, probably a survival-horror sprint with less wonder and fewer kid-friendly beats. Great for midnight screenings, less great for the generation that grew up imprinting on brachiosaurs in the sunlight. Cameron gets that. That is the point.
Where to watch
Jurassic Park is streaming on Peacock in the US.