After years of begging from both fans and the Jurassic World cast themselves, Bryce Dallas Howard in particular, the original trio from Jurassic Park is returning to the franchise. Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler, Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant and Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm are back for Jurassic World 3. For the next (and final?) chapter in the stories of this iconic trio, director Colin Trevorrow will actually be collaborating with the original cast, as he explained:
You start asking the most basic questions: who are these people now? What do they make of the new world they’re living in, and how do they feel about being part of its history?. Ultimately it will be in collaboration with the actors. They know and love these characters. We’ll do it together.
As Colin Trevorrow told Empire, he, and presumably co-writer Emily Carmichael, will be collaborating with Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum about their characters for Jurassic World 3. In his mind, those three actors love and know their iconic characters better than anyone else, and so they should be in on deciding who these people are when they return to the big screen.
We know where we left these characters, but we haven’t seen them in a substantive way in a long time, so there are critical questions that we need answered about who these people are now to help us understand their potential role in Jurassic World 3. As part of this collaborative process, Colin Trevorrow and the actors will endeavor to answer them.
We got a brief glimpse of what Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm is like now in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom when he was arguing to allow the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar to go extinct, but we haven’t seen Sam Neill’s Dr. Grant or Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler since Jurassic Park III. For all three of them, we need to learn what their take is on everything that’s happened both in the theme park and in the world at large with regards to dinosaurs.
Are Grant and Ellie still paleontologists? Do they keep in touch? What was their take on Claire Dearing’s Dinosaur Protection Group’s campaign to save the dinos and how do they feel about the current state of affairs? Do they feel any sort of responsibility for what’s happened? Are Ellie and Grant on the same page with Malcolm about letting dinosaurs go extinct? Have any of them ever visited the Jurassic World park? The questions go on.
Presumably we’ll get answers to some of these questions in Jurassic World 3, and those answers will come from the actors who made these characters famous an this franchise possible. It’s an encouraging thing because while we all want to see the trio again, bringing them back, as is the case with any sort of sequel like this, runs the risk of being disappointing. So it’s cool the characters are being brought back organically and that the actors will have a hand in it. Now can we get the kids back too?
Jurassic World 3 doesn’t hit theaters until June 11, 2021, but there are plenty of huge movies coming out next year. Check them out in our 2020 Release Schedule.
