It has been over 30 years since Jurassic Park first opened and wowed critics and audiences alike. While remembered fondly for its groundbreaking CGI that pushed cinema forward, the movie was also a great character piece that featured Steven Spielberg’s incredible mix of human drama, amazing spectacle, and thrilling action. For a period of time, the movie became the highest-grossing film of all time, so of course, Universal Pictures was quick to cash in. Two sequels were made: 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park and 2001’s Jurassic Park 3. Then, the franchise went on hiatus for 14 years, which was enough to build a sense of nostalgia.
Jurassic World opened in 2015 and at the time set the record for biggest opening weekend of all time (before being beaten six months later by Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and became one of the biggest movies of the decade despite receiving largely mixed reviews.The film would then be followed by 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the latest entry, 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion. This one went for the legacy sequel attempt to bring back classic characters. Despite the two later films grossing less with each entry, both still crossed $1 billion at the worldwide box office because every day, there is a new kid born who loves dinosaurs, and they will want to see a Jurassic Park movie.
Despite Jurassic World: Dominion being marketed as the end of the Jurassic Saga, Universal recently announced a new film was in development and has fast-tracked the movie into development with a July 2, 2025 release date. David Koepp, the screenwriter behind the first two films, will be back this time. The studio is currently searching for a director. Yet the question now is: where can the next film go following the event of Jurassic World: Dominion? Here is where the franchise can go.
Update February 13, 2024: This article has been updated following the announcement of Jurassic World 4 and director David Leitch having dropped out of the project.
It Could Segue Into More Creatures
Here’s where the main storyline is currently: With a new genetics company using its technology to devastate crop populations and a thriving dinosaur black market, it seems like the world is accepting new additions to the environment. That doesn’t mean everyone is thriving. The world is after Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the dinosaur black market is extremely active, and there are some weird insects buzzing about.
Jurassic World was the second trilogy to come from the franchise, building on the genetics work done in Jurassic Park, opening a new park, and creating new dinosaurs to keep things interesting for the public. Like the original trilogy, dinosaurs ended up in places they shouldn’t be, and someone is left to clean it up. The only difference is it’s the entire world cleaning it up this time.
Logically, our starting point is Jurassic World: Dominion. While the film wasn’t very cohesive with the rest of the Jurassic films, it was still a thrilling adventure that put innocent people in danger from dinosaurs. But there were also other creatures that were brought back to life by Biosyn. Arguably, the most shocking twist of the film was the introduction of locusts. Sure, locusts exist now, but prehistoric locusts? They have no place in today’s world. Instead of making dinosaur hybrids, the CEO of Biosyn, Dr. Lewis Dodgson, and our favorite dino-geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, have been making prehistoric insects that won’t eat their crop strains. They’re reproducing at unnatural rates, decimating crop fields throughout the United States, and are poised to cause an enormous food shortage and ecological disaster. It certainly is one way to sell your crops to farmers.
While Dr. Wu helps eradicate the swarms of locusts plaguing farmers, giving him a less-than-stellar redemption arc, the door is now wide open for something similar to happen again. With the trials against Biosyn taking place, the world will not only find out what they were doing, but other people might get similar ideas. A third trilogy could explore what happens when genetics goes beyond just cloning and creating dinosaurs. Why stop at locusts? There are plenty of prehistoric insects, arthropods, and others that more films could center around. This could power the creature feature aspect of the franchise that’s been kept alive by the huge sequels with not so interesting characters. It’s now all about creatures, so why stick with only a handful?
The most obvious answer is to resurrect writer John Sayles’s abandoned idea for Jurassic Park 4 from the mid-2000s. His film treatment saw human-dinosaur hybrids as part of the plot. They would have been created as a part of the US military to weaponize dinosaurs, something hinted at in Jurassic World. This might be the perfect place to revisit the concept as now the door has been blown wide open for human and dinosaur genetic engineering.
Explore the New Jurassic World
One frustrating element about Jurassic World: Dominion was despite the tease at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom about the next movie exploring a world where dinosaurs roam the Earth and how that impacts everyone, the movie largely ignores that except for a few side missions and instead of more interested in bringing back fan-favorite characters from the original movie and focusing on locus. That is what people want to see when they buy tickets for Jurassic World, not dinosaurs but locus, obviously.
An interesting development of the film was that Franklin Webb, a former IT worker at Jurassic World and activist to save the dinosaurs, started working with the CIA. The intelligence service created a division just for dinosaurs to track down smugglers, black-market breeders, and anything else the government might want to intervene with. As the plot moves along, audiences discover that Barry Sembène, former Velociraptor trainer with Jurassic World, has become a deep undercover operative for the CIA, passing along information on dinosaur trades and sales.
Rather than another three films focusing on the same rinse and repeat of the first two trilogies, maybe it’s time for the franchise to go a legal/spy thriller route. A film following CIA agents as they try to take down a dinosaur trafficking ring or a rogue geneticist trying to create a biological weapon sounds really fun. It takes everything we know about a dinosaur-filled world and gives an entirely new angle while leaving the door open for previous characters to return.
The government also introduced the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife, which maintains sighting reports and relocates dinosaurs as needed. They were relocating dinosaurs to the preserve run by Biosyn, which the United Nations has seemingly taken over. With the CIA busting illegal breeders and the DPW relocating them to an internationally protected sanctuary, a few films could come from that and provide a new take on what is quickly becoming a tired premise.
Each film could follow a different facet of the new government entities. Maybe the first follows Barry and others as they work to infiltrate a breeding or trafficking ring, passing information along to Franklin and other CIA agents. The next film could involve busting the ring and introducing new characters that work in the CIA division as they use Barry’s intel to close in and arrest the people involved. The final film could follow them as they work to relocate the dinosaurs to the sanctuary, as there is a final effort by the breeders or sellers to get them back. This route could also include other creatures.
The film could even explore other genres. In 2019, the short film Battle at Big Rock premiered on FX and took place between the events of Fallen Kingdom and Dominion. The film was a small-scale horror story following a family camping trip that is disrupted by a dinosaur attack. It is thrilling, features some interesting new characters with real human drama at the center, and truly explores the concept of dinosaurs in the real world. Films could see a dinosaur let loose in the suburbs, a ship out at sea and they encounter the Mosasaurus, or a wacky comedy where someone buys their kid a baby Triceratops as a pet that eventually becomes to big. The sky is the limit.
Focus On New Characters or Use Under Utilized Supporting Characters
Jurassic World deserves some credit in the sense that instead of falling back on the habit of legacy sequel troupes for the first entry, they started with a batch of new and original characters with no connections to the previous movie, using the park as the central hook for audiences. While they would fall back on legacy characters for the two sequels, they at least tried with the first film. However, the issue was that despite having two big stars like Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, their two characters are largely underwritten.
It might be time to start a new Jurassic movie with a new batch of characters that have no connection to the events of the past six films. It creates a new starting point and a new perspective. It would be interesting to follow a character that has been alive since Jurassic World first opened and has known dinosaurs as something that has always existed instead of a long-extinct creature magically brought back, a meta-narrative to an audience who has grown up with Jurassic Park movies.
Masie might be another interesting character to follow as the series moves forward. Since she is part clone, she has an interesting place in the legacy of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. Now an adult, she could go out on her own, away from Claire and Owen, and try to find her own place in the world.
If the franchise wants to bring back legacy characters, there are plenty of underutilized, interesting characters. Why not bring back Hammond’s grandchildren, Lex and Tim? They were a big part of the first movie, and aside from a cameo in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, it is odd how they never came back for any other movie. Ian Malcolm’s daughter Kelly Curtis from The Lost World or even Vince Vaughn’s character Nick Van Owen likely have exciting stories to tell. Both Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson could return as their characters from Jurassic World as both are now even bigger stars than before, and the events of that film likely altered their lives in fascinating ways.
Throughout decades of films, we’ve built that relationship with the franchise that can’t limit spectators to what went on in Dominion and stay with that. Just think for a bit. Which ones do you actually remember the most? Yes, it’s a hot and bold take, but by this point, anything could and should happen in the franchise in order to bring it back to life.
Going Back to Its Roots…But Will Universal Let It?
1993’s Jurassic Park was a very effective movie. But it wasn’t only because it gave audiences something they hadn’t seen before in the form of state-of-the-art visual effects. It was also a monster feature where you cared for the characters, it made you ask the relevant questions about the science of the film, and it had all the knack for being a blockbuster behemoth. Replicating it is impossible. But at least Universal could give it a try.
When the release date for Jurassic World 4 was announced, it was said that the film would be directed by David Leitch, whose previous work includes The Fast & The Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, and the upcoming The Fall Guy. Leitch is a director who clearly is comfortable working in big studio franchises and certainly has a distinct style, even if his movies don’t tend to get the best reviews. However, shortly after, it was announced that he would not be directing the movie as he and the studio could not agree on the direction of the film, and Universal wanted to meet the 2025 release date they had set for themselves. They now will likely look for a journeyman filmmaker, one less likely to put a lot of themselves into it and more likely to meet a release date.
There certainly is nothing wrong with a journeyman filmmaker. Sometimes, you just need to get the job done. Yet Universal backing themselves into a corner based on a release date that they set and can move is troubling, as it is clear they are focused less on making a good movie and getting a big blockbuster out in time for the 4th of July weekend. This is similar to Jurassic Park III, where the movie moved through pre-production quickly to meet its release date despite never having a finished script, resulting in a movie that likely killed the franchise for over a decade.
There is also notably something a bit depressing about the studio not wanting to go for a strong creative vision, given that it was Steven Spielberg himself who launched Jurassic Park. The movie was a hit partially because it was clearly the work of a talented filmmaker who was not only working at the top of his game but was given a certain amount of creative freedom and control. Since this movie, the films have lost a lot of creative spark since Universal Pictures has been so invested in the movie that, as a brand, they have a much higher amount of control over it. It’s not just a movie; it’s theme park attractions and merchandise they need to sell.
Yet that is why they should let a strong director with vision take over the series. It could help make the film stand out from the rest of the franchise. There are plenty of exciting filmmakers that could do great things with a Jurassic Park film. It doesn’t even need to be a cliche pick like Christopher Nolan Denis Villeneuve, or Greta Gerwig because they are the biggest names in Hollywood studio filmmaking. Imagine a Jurassic Park directed by Godzilla Minus One‘s Takashi Yamazaki? Or Selma‘s Ava DuVernay? Directors like David F. Sanberg (Shazam!), David Lowery (The Green Knight), or Kenneth Branagh (A Haunting in Venice) could all likely make a fascinating Jurassic Park movie. Promising Young Woman and Saltburn director Emmerd Fennell has expressed interest in making a Jurassic Park film, and that certainly sounds interesting.
Where else could the franchise go? Time will tell. At least we know there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and everything will be clarified in July 2025.
Jurassic World 4 opens in theaters on July 2, 2025.
