The Relic is a 1997 American monster-horror film directed by Peter Hyams and based on the best-selling 1995 novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The film stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, and James Whitmore. In the film, a detective and a biologist try to defeat a South American lizard-like monster which is on a killing spree in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The movie was shot in Chicago at the highly-regarded Field Museum of Natural History. Production was originally intended to be held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. However, a deal could not be reached and, after taking interest in the film's premise, the Field Museum offered to let the studio shoot there instead. The film was the second on-screen collaboration between Hunt and Miller, who both worked on the film Kindergarten Cop as well. The film was released in the United States on January 10, 1997, by Paramount Pictures. It grossed over $48 million worldwide. It was the last film appearance of actress Audra Lindley. Plot John Whitney, an anthropologist for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, studies a tribe in South America and drinks a soup made by the tribesmen. Shortly after, Whitney accosts a merchant ship captain, asking him to remove the cargo he had intended to send to Chicago off the ship. Unwilling to delay the ship's departure, the captain refuses and Whitney sneaks aboard. Unable to find his cargo, he cries out. Six weeks later, the ship arrives on Lake Michigan with its crew missing. Chicago PD homicide detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta and his partner, Sergeant Hollingsworth, investigate the ship and find dozens of bodies and severed heads in the bilge. Another week later, Margo Green, an evolutionary biologist, arrives at work at the museum and discovers that co-worker Greg Lee is applying for the same research grant she is after he had gotten one for himself already. Margo and her mentor, Albert Frock, examine Whitney's crates after their arrival and find the crates empty, except for a bed of leaves and a stone statue of the "Kothoga", a mythical forest monster. Margo notices a fungus on the leaves and sends it to be analyzed. That night, security guard Frederick Ford is murdered like the ship's crew. D'Agosta suspects a connection. Believing the killer is still inside the museum,