Hold on to your butts—Jurassic Park 4‘s director has been confirmed. Following the trend of studios choosing slightly lesser known names to helm larger-than-life franchises—Joss Whedon and The Avengers, Marc Webb and The Amazing Spider-Man, Fede Alvarez and Evil Dead—Colin Trevorrow has been tapped to take on the task of the fourth instalment in Steven Spielberg’s dino-mite series.
Trevorrow made his feature debut at Sundance last year with Safety Not Guaranteed. A soft sci-fi semi-romantic comedy about time travel, the film starred perennial indie favourite Mark Duplass as a man who places a wanted ad for a time travel partner. Aubrey Plaza—perennial Parks and Rec favourite—played one of three reporters who go to investigate the story. Backed by the producers of Little Miss Sunshine, the film cleaned up on the festival circuit, winning Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. So how did Trevorrow make the jump to dinosaurs?
Back in November 2012, Film School Rejects unearthed a video of Trevorrow hinting at rebooting a classic franchise. As everyone had a one-tracked Star Wars mind at the time, the assumption was he would be working with Han Solo and Leia. Trevorrow refuted the find semi-cryptically on twitter, finally putting the rumour to rest while speaking with the The Hollywood Reporter. Turns out it was raptors, not R2D2, that he was “trying not to mess up.”
Due out in June 2014, Spielberg isn’t fully stepping away from JP4, assuming an executive producer role. Yet crucial questions remain: Will Laura Dern reprise her role as Dr. Ellie Sattler? Will the vicious compsognathus be back? But most of all: Will Jeff Goldblum return as Dr. Ian Malcolm to once and for all explain chaos theory as we try not to swoon?
