DragonHeart

The idea came to Patrick Read Johnson in 1988 and he pitched it a year later to Raffaella De Laurentiis as The Skin Game with a dragon: a knight and a dragon staging fake slayings for gold. He expected to direct; Universal removed him, leaving him story and executive producer credits. Rob Cohen took the chair in January 1994. Liam Neeson was the first choice for Bowen; the studio refused him. Universal would not set the budget below $23 million; the film cost $57 million. Phil Tippett put Draco on screen for 23 minutes against 6.5 for the Jurassic Park dinosaurs. Once Connery was cast the dragon’s face was shaped towards his, from hundreds of stills sorted by emotion. The wingspan was first calculated at 125 feet and cut to 72 to fit the sets. At the 69th Academy Awards it lost the visual effects award to Independence Day. It won Best Fantasy Film at the 23rd Saturn Awards, with nominations for costumes, music and effects. Caricature, the lip-sync system ILM wrote for Draco, won programmer Cary Phillips an Academy Technical Achievement Award. A good fit if you take the dragon’s share of screen time as the film’s real measure. Not for anyone waiting for the Bowen and Kara thread to pay off; their declaration scene was cut.