Trivia

Screenwriter Kevin Jarre was actually the one who wrote the first spec script for the movie sometime around 1989 or earlier, and producer Lawrence Gordon, who produced films like Predator (1987) and Die Hard (1988), bought it in January of 1990 but later his script was sold to other studios and by the time the movie was going to be made Jarre's original script was drastically changed by many other writers to the point where only Lewis Colick, one of the writers who worked on re-writes, got the only writing and story credit. According to fans of Kevin Jarre who read his original script, not a single word from it stayed in the final film and his script was lot more darker and violent than the film. Same thing happened to Jarre's original scripts for films like Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and The Devil's Own (1997).After 25th anniversary screening of the film during Cinepocalypse film festival in Chicago, director Stephen Hopkins confirmed in Q&A how Jarre's script went through many different writers and versions months before they went with final script by Colick. Couple writers which Hopkins mentioned were involved in earlier versions were Gary Cunningham and John Carpenter, and he also said how one of these versions took place in desert outside L.A., and how it included biker gangs and rooftop motorcycle chases. See more