In 1992, a little-known Philip K. Dick short story was optioned as a sequel to Total Recall, with Arnold Schwarzenegger set to reprise his role. After a decade of Hollywood turbulence, involving a studio bankruptcy, a directorial hand-off, and two blockbusters that kept getting in the way, Steven Spielberg was finally behind the camera on what would become one of the most visually inventive science fiction films ever made: Minority Report.
A sequence of remarkable events would lead to Tom Cruise passing a script to Spielberg that kick-started a collaboration ten years in the making. Jan de Bont, fresh off Speed and Twister, was briefly attached as director before quietly fading from the project; and the delays caused by Mission: Impossible 2 and A.I. Artificial Intelligence paradoxically gave Spielberg and his team the time to make the film better, and make the film way more prescient than any other cinematic dystopian utopia future.
In the world of Minority Report, predicting crime before it happens raises serious moral and ethical questions. The Precogs, while gifted, are treated more like tools than human beings, in a system that claims to prevent crime but at what cost to individual freedom?
Minority Report had the world's first fully digital production design, a sixteen-person think tank of scientists and futurists who designed the world of 2054, and ILM's groundbreaking effects work blending physical model-making with cutting-edge CGI.
And... Tom Cruise runs. A lot.
(You're not seeing double! This episode had to be reissued due to an issue with Spotify. They couldn't fix it their end, so the episode has been re-released instead. Apologies for any confusion!)
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