Eruption: James Patterson completes Crichton’s passion project

Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton died of cancer more than 15 years ago. Now his unfinished “passion project” about a humanity-threatening volcanic eruption has been completed by fellow literary great James Patterson, and is already attracting keen interest in Hollywood.

Eruption takes readers on a thrilling journey around Hawaii’s largest island, where, unknown to its inhabitants, dangerous military secrets dating back decades are hidden.

An official screen auction has yet to take place, but Shelley Crichton, who discovered her late husband’s unfinished manuscript more than 10 years ago and is managing his estate, told BBC News that she is currently in talks with director Steven Spielberg about a possible film adaptation.

Crichton’s early works, Twister, Westworld and ER, sold for huge sums, and posthumously he remains one of the world’s most successful screenwriters for books, films and television.

“We’ve had an incredible amount of interest,” Patterson said in a joint interview with Shelley. “We’ve got about five stars who have put their hands up, a lot of filmmakers and studios.”

“When Jurassic Park came out, Michael and Steven Spielberg figured out a way to elevate the genre, which was really amazing and something that had never been done before. We want to do that with this film.”

“We have partners in mind who will work with us in the spirit of not just making a disaster movie.”

Spielberg’s highest-grossing film, Jurassic Park, is now a global franchise worth more than $6 billion (£4.7 billion).

“We went back to Steven’s,” Shelley said.

“The magic of this movie is that, as Jim said, it takes things that have never been done on film before. And it deserves it.”

“We need that height, like we did with Jurassic Park, where you really get into that ride.

“It’s a heart-pounding, spine-tingling experience. It’s all about working with the right team.”

Shelley knew Paterson, the world’s greatest thriller writer, had read all of Crichton’s novels and was the man she wanted, and after he sent her the unfinished manuscript, the 77-year-old signed on to finish it.

“I knew if I left it to Jim, he’d be fine,” she said.

“They were like a perfect duet on the page.

“I was so excited, and then I sat and waited. [thinking,] “When will I be able to read the chapters?”

They had to sift through a huge amount of “meticulously organized” scientific research, some of which was so obtuse that Patterson had to hire a researcher in Alaska to help.

“It had a very unusual dual storyline that came together,” Patterson said.

“As a storyteller, I found that fascinating.

“My joke to Shelley was, ‘Okay, now that I’ve read this far, I want to know how it all ends.'”

Less than a year later, this “unprecedented literary collaboration” was complete.

“I’m really into this kind of stuff,” Patterson says.

“I’m a hell of a worker, I work seven days a week.”

Patterson has sold over 400 million books worldwide.

Popular titles include So I’m a Spider, So What?, Kiss the Girls, and the Alex Cross series, which is being remade for television by Amazon Prime Video.

In the UK, only Richard Osman and Colleen Huber currently outsell Paterson.

He is also the most-borrowed author in British libraries, according to publisher Penguin Random House.

Eruption, originally with working titles The Black Zone and Vulcan, is Patterson’s first posthumous publishing endeavor, but he is no stranger to collaborating with high-profile people, having penned biographies for Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton.

“I’ll let the readers decide where Michael stops and I begin,” he said.

“Making it seamless was never going to be easy.”

Shelley rarely spoke publicly about her late husband.

She was pregnant with their son, John Michael, when she died in 2008 at age 66.

As CEO of the Crichton Sun, the publishing and production arm of the Crichton Foundation, Shelley has worked hard to preserve Crichton’s legacy.

And in her Santa Monica, California, home, she has kept her husband’s writing desk exactly as it has been for more than a decade.

There’s also a special photo of Crichton and Spielberg together, along with framed awards and film memorabilia.

Also carefully preserved are all of his original handwritten notes, including the first drafts of the Jurassic Park book and film.

Patterson felt pressured to do Eruption well because of the emotional impact Shelley had on the project and her son’s love of the novel.

There’s enough material for a sequel or even a trilogy, but neither Patterson nor Shelley are ready to commit to it just yet.

Meanwhile, the completion of Eruption has brought Shelley and her son closer to Crichton, despite their lingering grief.

“It gets less intense over the years, but it’s still emotional,” she said.

“I found a piece of Michael.

“I already loved his warmth, his vulnerability, his playfulness, his fun, his genius.

“I loved him for all the obvious reasons, and we were looking to start a family together.”

“His reappearance in the paper was necessary to stay connected to him.

“I had to find a way to answer some of the questions I didn’t know how to give my son about him.

“I didn’t want to read it in a book.

“I didn’t want to just assume how people felt about Michael.

“I needed to know it. And I needed to be able to witness it and feel it. And what happened in the process was I really fell more deeply in love.”

Eruption by James Patterson and Michael Crichton will be published in hardback by Century on Thursday 6th June (recommended retail price: £22).