Colin Trevorrow brought back the Jurassic Park franchise in a big way when he directed Jurassic World, which became one of the highest grossing movies of all-time. While the franchise continued, Trevorrow stepped back into a role as producer and let J.A. Bayona take the reins to direct Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. However, with the third film in the series Trevorrow has returned to the director's chair, and Trevorrow says that he just couldn't stay away because he loves the franchise so much.
When it comes to modern franchises, we generally see directors staying with successful franchises for the sequels. Patty Jenkins has directed both Wonder Woman movies so far, and she's already signed for the third. The first two Thor movies had different directors, but following Taika Waititi's success with Thor: Ragnarok, he was locked in for the next one as well. As a producer, Colin Trevorrow certainly could have directed Fallen Kingdom if he'd wanted to, but instead he let somebody else do it. We might have expected somebody entirely new to take the third movie as well, but Trevorrow tells EW that stepping away actually inspired him to direct the third movie that much more. According to the director...
Honestly, it's because I love it. I don't really have a better answer than that. I've been very fortunate to be involved in a lot of different kinds of stories, and after working with J.A. on the last film, that was inspiring for me in its own way, to see how another filmmaker interpreted that middle chapter of the story. I was genuinely moved by the experience. I was going through a tough time myself. So to dive back into this world of dinosaurs with another filmmaker and make something we believed in, it made me want to finish what we started.
While Colin Trevorrow doesn't go into detail about what the "tough time" he was dealing with was, he's likely referring to the fact that he had lost the gig to write and direct Star Wars: Episode IX. The director was supposed to end the trilogy but apparent disagreements between Trevorrow and Lucasfilm on the script let to him leaving the project. Ironically this led to the Star Wars sequel trilogy being the other recent series where the director of the first movie came back to director the third after somebody else handled the one in the middle.
Colin Trevorrow hasn't spoken a great deal about leaving Star Wars but he has made it clear that he was disappointed that things ended up going the way they did. Jumping back into a different major film trilogy certainly could have helped deal with that disappointment. But that's not the only reason he says he wanted to go back to Jurassic World. He says watching J.A. Bayona direct the second film, and interpret the same characters and concepts in a fresh way, specifically inspired him to go back and do it all again.
It's going to be a while before we see just what Colin Trevorrow has made with Jurassic World: Dominion. The film is set for a summer 2022 release following the pandemic related delays.
