Colin Trevorrow won’t be back to helm Jurassic World 2, as he’s off making a small film you may have heard of called Star Wars: Episode IX. While we’re sad to see him go (though he did still write the script), the franchise is no doubt in good hands as The Impossible director J.A. Bayona will be taking over for the sequel and from everything we’ve heard so far, he’s definitely got some exciting ideas for it.
Still, how do you successfully follow up on a franchise revival that roped in an eye-watering $1.67 billion at the worldwide box office? It’s a tall task for any filmmaker and Bayona has certainly got his work cut out for him. Citing The Empire Strikes Back as inspiration, the director’s said in the past that Jurassic World 2 is going to take people to places where the franchise hasn’t been before, and that certain things will happen that may shock audiences.
Now, he’s gone ahead and hyped it up once again, revealing that the sequel will be “way bigger” than the last outing. In a recent interview to promote his new film A Monster Calls, here’s what Bayona shared:
“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.”
Further on in the interview, the director noted that the tricky part about making Jurassic World 2 is balancing the new with the old, saying that Colin did an excellent job of that in Jurassic World and now it’s up to him to find the balance:
“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.”
Jurassic World 2 is currently slated for June 22, 2018 and is very much considered the third entry into a full-blown trilogy, one which both Colin Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly are actively involved in alongside Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall.
Tell us, what are your early impressions of the film so far? Do you think it’ll be able to surpass its predecessor? Sound off down below and let us know!