Spielberg Understands You Need More ‘Jurassic Park’ Movies

Tim Grierson
·Editor
He can make your dinosaur dreams come true. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for USC Shoah Foundation Institute
He can make your dinosaur dreams come true. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for USC Shoah Foundation Institute

Imagine the power that Steven Spielberg wields: Whenever he sits down with a writer to talk about a new project, it's big news simply because it's going to involve Steven Spielberg. And if that new project just happens to be a new "Jurassic Park" film, well, then the internet will probably explode for a few hours after word gets out.

Thankfully, the World Wide Web was strong enough not to collapse after The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Spielberg met with screenwriter Mark Protosevich "to kick around ideas for how to re-boot the 'Jurassic Park' franchise." But if that news is something that makes you excited, The Hollywood Reporter wants you to know that, really, you oughta calm down: "Both Universal, which released the trilogy, and Spielberg's camp stress that no one has been engaged to write a script and that the discussions have been purely exploratory." Much like how you and your dorm buddies might have sat around going, "Wouldn't it be cool if they did this in the next 'Jurassic Park' movie?," Spielberg did that with Protosevich -- except he's Spielberg, so it might actually end up as a movie.

The Reporter's piece does a pretty good job explaining just why it would be stupid for Universal not to make another 'Jurassic Park.' The studio needs franchises badly beyond the Jason Bourne and "Fast and the Furious" movies, and while they've had some concerns about other movies' budgets, a new "Jurassic Park" -- whether a sequel or a reboot -- would be as close to a sure thing as you could probably ask for. The dinosaur effects in the original, which came out almost exactly 18 years ago, were groundbreaking for their time, and a follow-up movie filmed in 3D would be hard to resist. Plus, it has dinosaurs in it. Humanity has evolved over the millennia, but we're always gonna freakin' love movies with dinosaurs in them. Put it this way: We don't actually love the "Jurassic Park" films, but just the idea of a new one makes us giddy.

Although everything's "purely exploratory" at this point, we do wonder who would direct a possible "Jurassic Park" movie. Joe Johnston, who directed "Jurassic Park III" (a.k.a. "The One Spielberg Didn't Direct, So Don't Bother"), claimed last year that he's attached to the sequel, which at one point was supposedly about gun-toting dinosaurs and written by Oscar-winner William Monahan ("The Departed") and writer-director John Sayles. That idea has gone by the wayside, but is Johnston really in line to direct the next installment? We hope not: If you want people to get excited about another "Jurassic Park," it would be nice to find a filmmaker whose career hasn't been a series of being studio's second or third choice for a job. He came onto "Jurassic Park III" because Spielberg didn't want to do it, and he helmed "The Wolfman" when Mark Romanek walked away right before production. Maybe Spielberg should have a talk with him. That seems to get things moving.

Steven Spielberg Brainstorming 'Jurassic Park 4' with Writer Mark Protosevich (Exclusive) [Heat Vision/The Hollywood Reporter]

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