The DVD of Jurassic Park 3 has been scheduled for release in the US on December 11, 2001, just in time for the holiday season. The disc contains behind-the-scenes interviews, production photos, and more. Fans hoped to hear a commentary by director Joe Johnston, though the commentary track on the DVD features the special effects team, including FX guru Stan Winston.

Filming wrapped on or around January 29th, 2001, making the shoot roughly 105 days long (not counting weekends). According to an early call sheet, the shoot was originally scheduled for a 79 day shoot, which seems to indicate that filming went about a month over.

For awhile there was a rumor that a "mysterious character" (possibly one from another movie) would return in the final minutes of JP3, but this turned out to be a fluke -- an unexpected character did appear, but it was no one really important.

By all accounts, Spielberg was very pleased with Joe's work on JP3. "Steven is very happy with what he has seen of Joe Johnston's work in Jurassic Park 3," said a spokesperson for Spielberg.

The raptors in the film have also been given "subtle changes to their look" -- at least one sports a stylish feathered head crests, hinting at the bird/dinosaur connection. "My favorite new dinosaur [in JP3] is the Velociraptor," said Stan Winston in an interview. "The Velociraptor was in Jurassic Park one, and the Velociraptor was in Lost World, and Velociraptor is back in Jurassic Park III, but in a way, you've never seen it."

The animatronic spinosaur Stan Winston Studios has built for the film is likewise impressive. "The t-rex [model] was 9 tons.. [the] spinosaur is 24,000 pounds.. 12 tons of dinosaur.. the biggest creature character ever made for a movie," says Stan Winston. The spino is so big, in fact, that they had to tear open one of the garage doors at Stan Winston Studios to get it out. "Dinosaurs are cheap," Stan has said sarcastically. "It's tearing the building apart that's expensive."

Winston continues: "The most awesome feature of the spinosaur are it's forearms.. the t-rex has small forearms that don't do a lot.. the spino has huge forearms.. the forearms are virtually the size of a raptor... so huge, massive killing machine, that is connected to a very big dinosaur with a long, nasty snout that is somewhat dragon-esque or alligator-esque in its look."

To summarize, however, JP3 takes place 4 years after the events in The Lost World. Near the start of the film, a young boy (Trevor Morgan) is parasailing near the island (now strictly off-limits, of course), when the line breaks and is stranded. His parents (Tea Leoni and William H. Macy) launch a rescue expedition, but look to Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) for help. Without telling him the real reason they're returning to Isla Sorna, Grant agrees (after a little "persuading") to simply fly over the dinosaur santuary. Of course, nothing in Jurassic Park goes smoothly, and Grant learns they intend to land on the island. Despite Grant's protests, they head in, though the plane is quickly swatted to the ground by JP3's new dino, the spinosaurus.

Do you really need to know more than that? The film is jam-packed with action ("Action, action. It's very intense," says William H. Macy). "We've got dinosaurs you haven't seen before, and it's action pretty much from the beginning," says Sam Neill. "There's a lot of running in terror."

(After his now-infamous comments got national media attention, Macy would later back off his criticisms, saying positive things about JP3 and claiming he was actually talking about a different film. He later told a newspaper he "felt compelled" to write a letter of apology to executive producer Steven Spielberg for the comments, which he said were "taken out of context by a website and reprinted in the press".)

The soundtrack CD, which was released by Decca records, hit US stores July 10. According to someone who attended a scoring session, Davis' score for JP3 "blows [his] Matrix score away", and was recorded with a 110-piece orchestra and 70-person choir.

The soundtrack also includes an odd addition to a JP soundtrack -- Randy Newman's 1999 song "Big Hat, No Cattle", which is played in the background near the beginning of the movie. Director Joe Johnston says he chose the song because it "relates perfectly to the hidden agenda of the principals".

Konami did release, however, no less than three JP3 games for Nintendo's "Game Boy Advance", and Universal-owned Knowledge Adventure created three (less than stellar) "edutainment" CD-ROM titles for the PC.

Still in the works is a JP3 Arcade game, also by Konami, which was unveiled at a Japanese video game conference. The title, a high-tech shooting-game in the style of the 1997 TLW Arcade game by Sega, features a sensor which allows the player to actually physically move to avoid dino attacks. No word as to when the game will come to the US, however.

However, like most major releases in the summer of 2000, JP3 could not hold onto its momentum in its second week of release, and was beaten by Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes". That film did remarkably well its opening week, making $69 million. It too, however, would drop by almost 60% in its second week. Internationally, JP3 opened well, breaking several records and holding top spots in many countries and pulling in about $80 million so far.

By the end of the summer movie season JP3 had pulled in a substantial gross of around $180 million in the US, and about that same amount overseas. Certainly not as much as either of the two previous films took in, but still not bad for a third movie in a frachise.

While a JP4 obviously depends on how well JP3 does, at least one JP3 actor seems up for it: "I think there will be [a JP4]," said William H. Macy. "I took great pains to drop my wallet on one of those islands, so I have an excuse to go back."