Jurassic World (2015) brought home a massive $1.6 billion paycheck, which is good considering it has all those carnivorous mouths to feed. Many of those same mouths will return for the inevitable sequel next year, officially titled Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Here are just a few of the important details regarding casting and plot.
Obviously the key actors from the first movie, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas, will return as Owen and Claire. There’s also an early shot of a new character, a young girl revealed via Instagram photo. But the important thing is, Blue (the raptor) is expected to reprise her role as herself for the movie. Which brings us to the question of the plot.
What is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom going to be about? Colin Trevorrow, director of the first movie, promised that it won’t just be more of the same – dinosaurs chasing people around. “I don’t think that bigger, better dinosaurs or bigger, more epic-in-scope action sequences are what people are necessarily looking for.” Instead, Trevorrow hinted at a possible moral theme. The first Jurassic World showed us that man and dino are capable of getting along with some effort… a lot of effort. Perhaps we’ll get to see where that path leads us.
Trevorrow has another upcoming movie to direct (Star Wars), so he’s handed the prehistoric reigns over to AI Bayona for this one. And both have confirmed that this second installment will be much darker and more frightening than the last. Frightening from a human perspective, not from an oh-no-I’m-going-to-be-eaten one. They also spilled that the Jurassic World saga was planned as a trilogy, so there’ll also be a third movie after this one.
Now, let’s talk numbers. Budget numbers. There’s a two, a six, and about seven zeroes, in that order. In other words, $260 million. Holy indominus rex, a dino-sized budget for a dinosaur movie. Fans of ancient lizards can expect returns from that starting on June 22, 2018, in the U.S. when Fallen Kingdom hits theaters on our shores.
