Exclusive: Jurassic World 4 & 5 In Development, Colin Trevorrow Not Directing
Our sources tell us two more Jurassic World films are on the way, but filmmaker Colin Trevorrow won't be helming the next chapters.
This article is more than 2 years old
Life will continue to find a way. According to our trusted and proven sources, Jurassic World 4 & 5 are being developed. Colin Trevorrow–who directed 2015’s Jurassic World and this year’s Jurassic World Dominion, along with co-writing and producing the middle chapter 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom–won’t be the one in the director’s chair for these next two films.
The news of the sequels’ development, and of Trevorrow’s move out from behind the camera, shouldn’t be huge shockers. In a September interview with Empire, the filmmaker admitted that it was through the marketing for Jurassic World Dominion–as opposed to any kind of direct communication from Universal Studios–that he learned the third entry in his trilogy was being pushed as the series’ “final chapter.” So for Jurassic World 4 & 5, and perhaps beyond, the studio clearly has someone else in mind.
At the same time, Trevorrow made it clear that one of the major goals of his trilogy was to take an idea that was, in his words, “inherently unfranchisable” and expand it in such a way to make room for Jurassic World 4, 5, and likely as many sequels as the market could bear. On one hand he introduced characters like Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) and Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman) specifically to lay the groundwork for more films, and Dominion ends with the new status quo of humans and dinosaurs in a peaceful coexistence.
While as far as the reviews are concerned the Jurassic World films have suffered diminishing returns with each chapter–with the critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes dropping from 71% (Jurassic World) to 47% (Fallen Kingdom) to a franchise low of 29% (Dominion)–the box office receipts have not endured the same drop. In September Dominion crested the $1 billion mark; making it the fourth film in the franchise to do so, the seventh film overall from Universal Studios, and only the third film since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to make such a splash.
With those kinds of returns a Jurassic World 4 was likely inevitable, with some of the bigger questions being exactly who will helm the follow-ups and where exactly they’ll go with the story. One interesting rumor that surfaced last year was that after Dominion, the franchise would go in the direction of video game series Horizon Zero Dawn and have the cloned dinosaurs battling robot dinosaurs. It sounds kind of silly and improbable, but considering last year’s Godzilla Vs. Kong brought back Mechagodzilla and the Dinobots have already appeared in two of the Transformers live-action films; yeah it could happen.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that rather than continuing the story Colin Trevorrow told in his trilogy, Universal will opt to reboot everything with Jurassic World 4. Trevorrow cast doubt on the notion of a Jurassic Park reboot succeeding, which is potentially why our sources have told us he isn’t coming back for the new film. In June, Trevorrow said of a reboot: “I weep for whoever takes that on, because [Jurassic Park] is one of the greatest movies ever made.”
“And so I think in a lot of ways, our only choice is to move forward and to expand,” Trevorrow said. “Because going back there and redoing Spielberg and Crichton, best of luck.”
