Steven Spielberg Talks 'Minority Report'

WIRED: So what drew you to "The Minority Report"?

SPIELBERG: The thing about Philip K. Dick is that he's a concept illustrator. In "The Minority Report" he's got a very strong idea - that future murders can be preempted based on the psychic information from precognitives, or "precogs," as he calls them. And the head of Precrime, played by Tom Cruise, who brought the book and original script to me, is himself accused of a murder that's going to happen in 36 hours. He has to go on the run from all the men and women he's trained to catch people just like him. At its core the movie is a whodunit. It's actually a whodunit-to-me. I responded immediately to that. And then, I responded to the myriad possibilities of creating a future that is not too distant, yet with the kind of technologies we can only dream about but wish we had now.

How far ahead did you set it?

It's 2054. When we started brainstorming we invited some of the far-reaching thinkers in the areas of science and medicine, technology, transportation, and the environment to imagine what the near future would bring. We had a three-day think tank at the Shutters Hotel [in Santa Monica, California]. Usually you see these guys on Nightline talking to Ted Koppel. We had all of them in one room talking to each other. Most of the software in the movie is based on their suggestions of what it will be like in 50 years.

What struck you about their ideas?

One of the things that excited me the most, though it was off the subject of Minority Report, was the transportation system. Certainly, as a country dependent on Arab oil, we're desperate for alternative forms of energy. How do you most efficiently transport people from the workplace to home? Home to school? Home to shopping? And what kind of cities would be in our future? Based on ideas from this group, we devised a system where all the vehicles are crawling up and down the sides of buildings. It was like creating a SimCity.