joined the project, Elliott and Rossio revised the script based on his notes. Amongst the changes made to the first draft were the 12-year gap condensed to a year; Jill accompanies Keith to the Arctic site; Keith first notices Godzilla's teeth buried in ice instead of his claws; The alien probe crashes in Traveller, Utah instead of Kentucky. Elliott and Rossio remained on the project after De Bont left and completed their final rewrites in spring 1995. Prior to hiring a new director, TriStar hired Don Macpherson to rewrite the Elliott/Rossio script. Prior to his hiring, Macpherson was working on Possession until he received a call from his agent with an offer to work on Godzilla. Macpherson "immediately accepted" due to being a fan of the Toho Godzilla films. Macpherson met with Marc Platt, the then-President of TriStar, to discuss the film. The studio was concerned with the film's proposed $120 million budget, later revised to $200 million. De Bont insisted that all of the film's effects be entirely digital, Macpherson noted, "The problem was that, in this version of the movie, it was all effects. Godzilla was in virtually every scene. So everything was an SFX scene." Macpherson was tasked with rewriting the script to match TriStar's "ideal" budget of $80 million. Prior to rewriting the script, he requested to meet with the production crew to pinpoint which scenes were deemed the most expensive. The production crew reported that the three main problems that were considered "difficult and costly" were Godzilla's size, Godzilla's interaction with water, and Godzilla's interaction with masonry. Macpherson was shown storyboards, concept art, and designs from De Bont's version. However, he did not keep these ideas in mind, feeling that such elements would change depending on the budget. Instead, Macpherson used the Toho Godzilla design as a reference when rewriting the script. He noted that the project had transitioned into a film that turned directors away, stating, "they said they wanted strong, creative directors. But they wanted them as a kind of ‘badge’ of creative excitement and had no intention of allowing them their freedom." While Macpherson called Elliott and Rossio's original script "terrific," he took issue with several of its ideas. He felt that the script discarded the "Japanese element of post-war nuclear politics" from the Toho films, leaving Godzilla as a threat to a single country rather than the world, Macpherson added, "That