Night #132 - Genesis

It is a very little known fact that the movie Night at the Museum was inspired by a 1993 children's book of the same name, by Milan Trenc (even though this is mentioned in the credits, but who pays full attention to those?). The book starred a night guard named Hector who discovers that every night, the dinosaur skeletons in the Museum of Natural History come to life, and he has to feed them, let them go for walks in nearby Central Park, and above all make sure they all get inside by sunup. The book is 23 pages and doesn't explore in depth the exact reason why the dinosaurs come to life and need care (with the moral that "If you ever see a night guard sleeping, this is why" (he was up all night caring for reanimate skeletons)), and so while the movie was in development, one of the tasks was to come up with a reason behind this. This is the genesis of the notion of the tablet.

Because the studio was convinced that there was a story in that slight children's book, they wanted a movie made out of it, but having dinosaur skeletons come to life just wasn't enough. There apparently needed to be more: more depth to the world, more richness, texture, more everything (and of course a plot centered around why everything is coming to life in the first place). So the movie stewed in Development Hell while a lot of the basics were hashed, rehashed, and re-rehashed, and then hashed again, until finally, c. 2004-2006, there was a workable script everyone was happy with (this was also after some changes to personnel over the course of all this), and in 2006, we were finally given the final product: a movie about a down-on-his-luck divorced dad and newbie night guard at the Museum of Natural History who discovers that every single exhibit comes to life every night thanks to a magical Egyptian tablet.

It's also a little known fact that the original book that started it all was re-released, with the slight alteration that the main character's name is Larry instead of Hector, to reflect the 2006 and 2009 movies.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": A collection of interviews with the cast and crew of Battle of the Smithsonian.

Countdown: 241 Days to NATM 3.