Michael Crichton’s Micro headed to big screen courtesy of Steven Spielberg

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Michael Crichton, the man who brought us such memorable bestsellers as JURASSIC PARK, CONGO, SPHERE and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN may have passed away in 2008, but he still holds plenty of power in Hollywood. The author’s final novel, MICRO, has just been snatched up by Dreamworks Studios.

Crichton died before MICRO was done, but it was ultimately completed by author Richard Preston and published by HarperCollins in 2011. The high-concept thriller follows a group of graduate students lured to Hawaii to work for a mysterious biotech company who find themselves miniaturized and cast out into the rain forest.

Yes, you read that right. It’s like HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS! but serious!

Here’s the book’s full synopsis:

In a locked Honolulu office building, three men are found dead with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye.

In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting. Trillions of microorganisms, tens of thousands of bacteria species, are being discovered; they are feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up. Nanigen MicroTechnologies dispatches the group to a mysterious lab in Hawaii, where they are promised access to tools that will open a whole new scientific frontier.

But once in the Oahu rain forest, the scientists are thrust into a hostile wilderness that reveals profound and surprising dangers at every turn. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, they find themselves prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power. To survive, they must harness the inherent forces of nature itself.

Frank Marshall (JURASSIC WORLD) will produce for Dreamworks. As with all Dreamworks projects, Steven Spielberg will oversee its development; he made the following statement: “We are so pleased to have this opportunity to develop Micro. For Michael, size did matter whether it was for ‘Jurassic’s huge dinosaurs or Micro‘s infinitely tiny humans.”