Ray Bradbury's 1953 sci-fi short story "A Sound of Thunder" about the dangers of one little mistake in the past affecting the whole course of history, is considered one of the genre's true classics (you can find it in full here, its about a 10-minute read) and is thought to be the basis for the expression 'the butterfly effect'. Still, at only a few pages long, there's only enough material for maybe a short film which would explain why it has been adapted in only video game format or as a Simpsons Halloween spoof til now.
Warners has had this feature project in development for a long time with various people attached and then Peter Hyams shot it with Ben Kingsley and Ed Burns in the key roles whilst a late 2004 release is planned. However the film's production company Crusader Entertainment has just released a detailled synopsis of the movie and from the sounds of it there is extremely little in common with Bradbury's story at all, which might explain recent rumours that the project may undergo a title change. Here's the storyline of the film:
"In the not too distant future, scientist Travis Ryer finances his research in the potentials of time travel technology by leading expeditions of burned-out billionaires who pay thousands of dollars for the opportunity to hunt extinct creatures of the past. These hunts are fairly routine, however, one afternoon their guns malfunction, and the team barely makes it back alive. When Travis returns to the past the following day, the time portal computer, TAMI, is going haywire - volcanoes are exploding, and dinosaurs are dying. Then when Travis returns to the present, he discovers other more ominous signs that something is amiss: Files are missing from his computer, the weather has turned strange, and strange plant life is sprouting up around New York City. Travis suspects that somehow he and his team must have corrupted the timeline. This belief is confirmed when Travis tracks down Allison, the inventor of modern time travel, just as a Time Wave rolls through New York city. Instantly, swarms of bugs overwhelm New York. Whole buildings disappear. People cease to exist. Enlisting Allisons help, Travis deduces that one of the self-indulgent billionaires must have brought a butterfly back from the past, despite dire warnings against this. This butterfly must have been an ecological hinge point, Travis surmises, and now the current ecosystem is in jeopardy. Humanity may cease to exist. Travis, Allison and their team set out across a New York landscape now rife with thick jungle and dangerous, never-before-seen predators, determined to track down the stolen butterfly. Once found, they must bring it back to the cretaceous period before the last time wave hits, and man's mark is forever swept from the face of the Earth. " Thanks to 'Dust Bunny'
