Colin Trevorrow Says Jurassic World: Dominion Will Conclude the Jurassic Franchise

Perhaps mercifully, Jurassic World: Dominion director Colin Trevorrow confirmed to Entertainment Weekly this week that his upcoming film (still a long ways off, in 2022) would serve as a conclusion to the overall Jurassic Park/Jurassic World series. In effect, it will create two interconnected trilogies, much like any two of the three distinct Star Wars trilogies—the JP trilogy and the JW trilogy.

“To me, [Dominion] is a culmination of one story that’s been told,” Trevorrow said to EW. “When you got to the end of the Jurassic Park trilogy, it may not have been as clear in what the complete story of those three movies was because they were a bit more episodic in the way that they were approached. But this trilogy is not that way. It’s very much a serialized story. What was important for me was, when you watch Dominion, you really feel like you are learning how much of a story that first set of movies was and how everything that happened in those movies actually informs what ultimately is able to happen in this. If kids who are born today are going to be presented with six Jurassic Park movies—you hope the parents will buy them the box set—you hope they are going to get to feel like they watch one long story.”

When we last left the series, after director J.A. Bayona’s rather silly and tonally unpredictable Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the island amusement park seen in Jurassic World had been destroyed by an erupting volcano, and many dinosaurs had escaped into the wild after a private auction failed in catastrophic fashion. Dominion seems to imagine a world where these escaped dinosaurs manage to avoid immediate capture and termination by governments, and instead roam the wilds, causing trouble for society. Totally absurd? You bet, but we’re looking forward to seeing the aquatic Mosasaurus chomp some surfers anyway.

In all honesty, it’s probably time for the series to end, at least before the inevitable attempt at some kind of reboot five years later. Dominion has had a particularly rocky road through production, being delayed by COVID-19 multiple times and then functioning as the first high-budget Hollywood film to attempt to complete its filming during the pandemic. Its release date has shifted accordingly, and been pushed back by the glut of high-profile films blocking its path. Wanting a proper summer blockbuster release, it has currently been pushed back to June 10, 2022, when Universal and co. feel quite certain that pandemic concerns will be behind us. Let’s hope they’re right.