New York City, and Lincoln Child (though it omits their major character, FBI agent Pendergast). It was developed by Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. The director, Peter Hyams, commented "I don't think you can scare people, unless you involve them." and "A movie like this has to be intelligent." Because the novel portrayed the museum's administration in an unflattering light, they turned the film's producers down. Paramount Pictures offered the museum a seven-figure sum of money to film there, but the administration was worried that the monster movie would scare kids away from the museum. The producers were faced with a problem as only museums in Chicago and Washington, D.C., resembled the one in New York. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago loved the premise and allowed them to shoot there. Penelope Ann Miller had not done a horror film prior to The Relic but was drawn to director Peter Hyams' desire to have a strong, smart female lead. Tom Sizemore was attracted to the film because he got to play the male lead: "I had the responsibility of pushing the narrative forward." Makeup artist Stan Winston and his team made three creatures with two people moving the heads and people on the side working the electronics to move the arms, claws, mouth, and so on. Hyams reviewed Winston's early drawings and his only suggestion was to make the monster more hideous looking. The director also suggested certain invertebrates for inspiration and Winston came up with an arachnoid outline for the monster's face. In the scenes where the creature is running or jumping, a computer-generated version was used. In addition to shooting on location in Chicago, a set was built in Los Angeles of a tunnel flooded with water. Sizemore spent most of the shoot either damp, cold or soaking wet and, as a result, caught the flu twice. The production was shut down briefly when Hyams became too sick to work. Release The Relic premiered on January 10, 1997. It opened #1 at the box office, grossing $9,064,143 its opening week and a total of $33,956,608 in the US, against an estimated cost $60 million. It was released on Blu-ray on April 6, 2010. Reception On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Relic holds an approval rating of 37%, based on 35 reviews, and an average rating of 4.7/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score