Long time friends of best selling fiction author Michael Crichton, Richard and Lauren Donner spoke with us about their new film "Timeline," where they are director and producer, respectively. Best known for his "Lethal Weapon" films and "Superman," Richard Donner finally has a dream fulfilled, to make one of Crichton's books into a film.

Richard: It took us a long time to get this project going. France did not work because it's so built up (developed), but we found a great place in Wales and we started building sets. A month before we were ready to begin shooting, England had foot and mouth disease. That was probably 2.5 million bucks down the drain. We searched around in Europe and came up with a national forest just outside Berlin. We couldn't move anything from England. We started all over again and 9/11 happened. I just didn't want to be making a high profile American film at that moment. We moved out of there, and by then almost $5 million was gone. By this time we'd eaten so much of our budget, and because of the expense of filming in the states, we ended up an hour and a half outside of Montreal.

Richard: The extras were often professional jousters, who were like Civil War reenactors, which meant that they had to be careful with the actors. Also, when the fireballs were in flight during the big battle scenes, it was the real thing. The actors had on fire suits and anytime things got close to getting too hot, we cut the scene and did it again. The actors were really into it, they often did not go to their trailers while the film was being shot and they were on break.

When asked if Crichton was involved in the process, Donner said, "When we'd do a draft we'd give it to him for his input. He was very involved and is pleased with the project. It's difficult to decide what complex things to do in shorthand, and others to get into detail. Getting into the intricacies of time travel is another movie."