The story "Minority Report" by
Philip K. Dick was originally adapted as a
sequel to
Total Recall (1990) 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 (1990). This script was eventually tossed out when
novelist
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
Minority Report (2002) film is the sequence in the car factory, an idea
that Spielberg loved.
