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‘Jurassic World’ Sequel Will Call Back Original Trilogy
It’s impossible to capture the awe and wonder that we all felt when Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park hit theaters. It was the first of its kind and utilized new technology to bring the dinosaurs to lift. Each and every sequel became less and less impressive, leading up to last year’s Jurassic World, which injected the fun back into the franchise. Sure, it wasn’t a great film overall, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t have a blast watching it. And at this point, that’s all I wanted from a sequel.
J. A. Bayona is taking on the sequel to Jurassic World, and it sounds as if his head is in the same place as mine. After making a series of bleak and dramatic features, he’s looking forward to creating something that his a more enjoyable emotional curve. In a new interview promoting his A Monster Calls, Bayona explains this, while also revealing that there are plans to call back the original trilogy.
After doing THE IMPOSSIBLE and A MONSTER CALLS I said, ‘I want to have fun now.’ So, let’s do a dinosaur film with Spielberg. It’s great, but at the same time it’s massive and way bigger than [the last] one.
I think what is tricky about doing the fifth movie of a franchise is how will you bring in new stuff and still pay tribute to what we all know and the legacy of the film. So, it’s the balance between the new stuff and the old stuff. I think Colin did a great job in the first one finding the balance between what people are expecting and what people are being again. I was kind of surprised when he pitched me the story because it leads the story to a place that we’ve never seen before and it brings some of the most important elements from the other films and makes something with them. I thought that was very interesting. It’s the second chapter of a trilogy so it gets the story to a place that wants you leaving more and more.
The sequel has Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard reprising their roles, with Rafe Spall and Toby Jones joining the cast. The script was penned by Trevorrow and Derek Connolly.
The park opens again on June 22, 2018.
Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor best known for his role in 1993’s Jurassic Park, has passed away this week at 78 years old. In a statement shared on Neill’s Instagram page this morning, the actor’s family said that his passing was “sudden and unexpected.”
Neill had been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 2022, but stated the following year that he was in remission. The family notes that he “remained cancer free” at the time of his passing.
The family statement reads, “It is with immense sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July, in Sydney Australia. Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life. The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free.
“They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care. More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”
In addition to his iconic role as Dr. Alan Grant in the original Jurassic Park and the sequels Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World: Dominion, Sam Neill left an indelible mark on the horror genre with memorable roles in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, The Omen: The Final Conflict, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, and sci-fi horror favorite Event Horizon.
Sam Neill’s vast resume in film and television began in the early 1970s and also includes the films Sleeping Dogs, Enigma, The Good Wife, A Cry in the Dark, Dead Calm, The Hunt for Red October, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Hostage, The Jungle Book, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, The Horse Whisperer, Bicentennial Man, Daybreakers, Escape Plan, and Thor: Ragnarok.
Sam Neill is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.
Steven Spielberg said in a statement to Variety, “I owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Donaldson, Gilliam Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce for casting Sam Neill in the roles in which he was so brilliant that brought him to my attention and led to his playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Sam was exceptionally collaborative. It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children. I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him.”
Spielberg adds, “Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.”
Sam Neill in ‘Event Horizon’
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