Trivia

Three years before production began, Steven Spielberg assembled a team of sixteen future experts in Santa Monica to brainstorm out the year 2054 for him. This team included Neil Gershenfeld, professor at the Media Lab at MIT; Shaun Jones, director of biomedical research at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency); William Mitchell, dean of the school of architecture at MIT; Peter Calthorpe, the New Urbanism evangelist; Jaron Lanier, one of the inventors of virtual reality technology; Douglas Coupland, author and commentator; Stewart Brand, author, scientist and co-creator of The Well on-line community; Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine; Harald Belker, car designer; and John Underkoffler, the science and technology advisor for the movie.

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 and xXx.

Tom Cruise began filming only days after completing work on Vanilla Sky.

Cameo: [Cameron Crowe] Tom Cruise’s director from Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky appears as a commuter on the train who looks at Anderton over the top of his newspaper and recognizes him.

Cameo: [Cameron Diaz] Tom Cruise’s co-star in Vanilla Sky plays the blond woman sitting just behind director Cameron Crowe, the man who looks over at Anderton on the train.

Both Matt Damon and Dutch actor Yorick van Wageningen were considered for the role of Danny Witwer.

Spencer Treat Clark played the role of Sean at age 11 in a brief dream sequence meant to be placed immediately after Anderton is put into containment. The entire scene was deleted. Nevertheless, theatrical prints of the film had him in the cast list in the end titles.

Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed Tom Cruise in Magnolia, has a cameo on the train. It is reported that he is so hard to find that Anderson himself does not know where he appears.

The small storage media used throughout the film are clear plastic versions of Iomega’s PocketZip disks.

The “PreCogs” were all named after famous mystery writers. Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie.

The film projected on the wall of Dr. Solomon’s apartment that shows a man being shot in a Japanese hot-tub is Samuel Fuller’s House of Bamboo.

The husband at the beginning was going to murder his wife and her lover with a pair of scissors. This was also the murder weapon of choice in Dead Again. Both films were written by Scott Frank.

The opening sequence is a homage to Alfred Hitchcock. The scissors: Dial M for Murder, the eye glasses: Strangers on a Train, and the prolonged shot of the eye: Psycho.

The tiny, in-the-ear cell phones used throughout the movie (but most noticeably by Pre-Crime Director Lamar Burgess (played by Max von Sydow)) in the film’s final scenes, are actually Bang and Olufsen earphones minus the connection cables.

The opening part of the sound track by John Williams echoes that of Vangelis’ score in Blade Runner, with the booming noises and a black screen, before the opening scene fades in.

Apparently, Colin Farrell had a lot of trouble delivering the line “I’m sure you all understand the legalistic drawback to Precrime methodology”.

The car factory scene is based on an Alfred Hitchcock idea for a never-filmed sequence in North by Northwest to which François Truffaut also referred in interview.

The pistol that John Anderton uses is the Beretta 9000.

The second part of Spielberg’s unofficial “running man” trilogy, beginning with Artificial Intelligence: AI and concluding with Catch Me If You Can.

The “PreCogs” sepia-toned cottage is the same place used as Senator Padme Amidala’s lakeside retreat on Naboo for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

In the scene where John kidnaps Agatha, Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) asks, “How much time do we have?” (Asking how much time until John commits the murder). A Pre-Crime Officer responds, “51 minutes 28 seconds.” This is exactly how much time remains until the end of the movie as well (until the credits begin to roll).

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.

Jan de Bont was a credited producer because he was originally going to direct the film. Steven Spielberg claimed that De Bont did no work on the film once Spielberg joined the project and publicly questioned whether he deserved the credit.

The film playing in the background while Anderton is recovering from the eye transplant is The Mark of Zorro.

The song Dr. Solomon Eddie’s assistant sings is a Swedish children song called “Små grodorna” (The small frogs) usually sung on Midsummer Eve parties.

Meryl Streep was originally cast as Iris Hineman, but had to back out.

The story by Philip K. Dick was originally adapted as a sequel to Total Recall by writers 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 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 Spielberg loved.

Steven Spielberg chose the special effects company Imaginary Forces to design the film’s prevision sequences because he liked the title sequence they designed for Se7en.

The part of Danny Witwer was originally American and with a father who died outside a church in Maryland but Spielberg didn’t think Colin Farrell could fully shake his Irish accent so the character was made Irish.

The film was almost shot a few years earlier, before Steven Spielberg decided to do Artificial Intelligence: AI instead and have the Minority Report script reworked. According to reports, Tom Cruise’s co-stars in that version would have been Cate Blanchett as Agatha, Matt Damon as Witwer, Ian McKellen as Burgess and Jenna Elfman as Lara Anderton. After the delay, Javier Bardem has stated in interviews that he was offered the part of Witwer, but turned it down because he “didn’t want to just run around chasing Tom Cruise”. This lead to the casting of Colin Farrell.

In the first draft of the screenplay, the main character was named Paul Anderson. This was changed to “John Anderton” to avoid confusion with movie directors Paul W.S. Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Cameo: [Scott Frank] the co-writer appears as a customer talking to imaginary guests (“You’re the man”) in the cyber parlor.

According to sound designer Gary Rydstrom, the sounds for the Mag-Lev (Magnetic Levitation) car system was made from the sounds of his own washing machine.

Director Trademark: [Steven Spielberg] [Music] Score by John Williams.

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.

For the scene where Anderton holds his breath in the bathtub, Steven Spielberg was going to CG the air bubble rising but Tom Cruise took the time and learned how to do it himself.

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

At the police station the officers talk about the metaphysical proof of precognition. Chief Anderton (Tom Cruise) rolls a red ball along a table to demonstrate the law of cause and effect to Det. Witwer (Colin Farrell). All of this is an allusion to the philosopher David Hume’s famous claim that by observing billiard balls you can actually demonstrate that cause and effect does not exist but is merely a habitually created fiction of the mind.

Steven Spielberg hired the top 12 contortionist from around the world to do the futuristic yoga class scene.