JURASSIC WORLD sequels – What they could be about and who's coming back

It has barely been a week since Jurassic World has been released, and already it has written itself into the history books several times over by smashing through several records with its $511 million opening weekend. So naturally, people are already talking about a possible sequel.

With the movie only just being released though, there’s obviously not much info out there about any follow-ups, but here is what we know now:  Speaking to EW, star Chris Pratt has confirmed that he is already signed on more movies in the franchise. Specifically, he says that he’s contracted for “38 movies or something” but that’s probably just Chris Pratt being Chris Pratt.

The man who’s not returning though is director Colin Trevorrow, who has confirmed to THR that he won’t be back to helm any follow-ups in the franchise. However, he will apparently still be involved in the film (producer/writer?) and knows where the story would go. So where does it go then?

Well, speaking to Empire on a podcast titled “Ten Secrets of Jurassic World“, Trevorrow spilled the beans on several facets of the movie including a stegacerotaps hybrid dinosaur that was cut from the movie, why that one character had to have such a vicious and protracted death sequence, how Steven Spielberg wanted more dino poo in the movie and much much more. It’s all pretty informative stuff and a great read for fans [THOUGH SPOILER WARNING OBVIOUSLY], but most relevant to our own discussion is him talking about a direction for a possible sequel.

“I’m intrigued by the idea of applying what happened with nuclear power to dinosaurs: it started very small and was then used for a weapon and then as power, and finally spread to the point where there’s 22 different countries with that capability. The power to make a dinosaur has always been localised to InGen and Jurassic Park, but what if that goes open source and many different types of interests can make a dinosaur? There’s also room in exploring a world where we have the same relationship with dinosaurs as we have with other animals on this planet.”

This statement of going global with the scale was echoed by Trevorrow in a separate interview with EW, where he explained how this was already being setup in Jurassic World.

“I felt like it was my responsibility to at least tee up where we could go, and in doing that I felt like I don’t want to make it yet another island movie or another theme-park movie.

“I felt by introducing a couple key ideas and some of them are introduced by Dr. Wu, played by BD Wong, and even the simple idea that these people at Jurassic World won’t always be the only people that can clone a dinosaur. What happens when this technology goes open source? I think the minute that you add an idea like that into something like this, it can open up the minds of every young person who loved these movies. I think there’s a lot room to grow.”

The fact that Jurassic World ends with [SPOILER WARNING AGAIN] Wu getting away with the frozen embryos of several new hybrids definitely ties into that. But where would Wu be going? Well, clearly InGen are very much in the “breeding prehistoric creatures for their own purposes” game, as Vincent D’Onofrio’s Vic Hoskins revealed that his company has their own plans for this technology. Now you may have noticed that I said “prehistoric creatures” and not “dinosaurs” in that previous sentence, and that’s because these plans may extend beyond those terrible thunder lizards.

iDigitalTimes has spotted something very intriguing in the film’s viral marketing, as the viral website for the Masrani Global corporation who owns the amusement park in the movie, had a very interesting fictitious news report pop up.

“November 2014: InGen expands its excavations to Siberia

The new InGen facility “Martel” based in Siberia has now opened. A rotating research team of nine scientists and an excavation crew of 45 persons will undergo 18 months of drilling at 42 glacial ice locations. The team hopes to find organic remains dating from 40,000 to 200,000 years ago. The state of the art research base has been two years in the making, and is believed to be situated over a group of wooly mammoths buried under the permafrost. “This could potentially herald a new era of scientific discovery, helping us map out our natural history like never before. I’m excited to finally see Martel on completion,” expressed an excited Dr. Henry Wu, eager to add to InGen’s ever growing genomic library.”

Wooly mammoths? WHAT?!

Now in case you’re not up to date with your prehistoric paleontology, Wooly mammoths are from the Cenozoic Era, the same era you find saber tooth tigers and megaladon sharks. Could some future sequel be pitching some kind of Jurassic vs Cenozoic global war? I mean Jurassic World has already teed up the concepts of both dinosaurs fighting alongside humans, and dinosaurs being used as military assets, so this is certainly plausible. Although, you would also have to admit it’s also pretty ridiculous, and not that far off from the infamous aborted Jurassic Park 4 pitch that saw machine gun-wielding half-human half-dinosaur hybrids going to war with humanity.

As iDigitalTimes posits, a more believable scenario would be some kind of global outbreak of these creatures, making for a much bigger disaster as the humans have to recapture them. This bigger scale would unfortunately totally veer away from the more contained, smaller cast suspense thriller tone that has been set in the previous movies, but according to Trevorrow, a different tone may just be what works best for these sequels.

“In my personal opinion, this franchise will be better served by having different directors in the way they’re doing with Star Wars. Each of those Star Wars movies will be very personal and have completely new visions. There are some pretty cool Spanish horror directors whose Jurassic Park movie I’d love to see as a fan.”

(SIDEBAR:)Did Trevorrow just plant the seed for Jurassic Park movie directed by Guillermo Del Toro? Because I would watch the triceratops poop out of that in a heartbeat!(/SIDEBAR)

Irrespective of who Universal gets to helm this sequel, you can be damn sure that they’re going to be making that selection and any subsequent development a priority. At last count, the studio had about 550 million reasons to get any sequel fast-tracked. Based on the clues left in Jurassic World and Trevorrow’s statements, it’s clear that they were planning for sequels all along, so hopefully the script won’t just be some hastily slapped together disaster.

What would you guys like to see in a Jurassic World sequel? More of the same or are you already frothing at the mouth at the idea of a Mosasaurus vs Megalodon battle?

Last Updated: June 18, 2015