Jeff Goldblum Hasn’t Been Called For Jurassic World But Confirms Independence Day Sequel Talks

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

GoldblumThough some film franchises manage to work around it, one of the big limitations and disappointments about reboots—as opposed to sequels—is that there is very little chance that a favorite actor will come back for a beloved role. To that effect, Jurassic World has done itself a fine service in making it a “so many years later” sequel, rather than just retconning everything that fans cherish about this series. And everyone knows it means we might actually see a few familiar human faces among the scaly CGI ones. But Jeff Goldblum won’t be one of them, at least not yet.

It’s not because Goldblum is holding out for more money or anything silly like that. He says that it’s just that neither director Colin Trevorrow, nor anyone from Amblin, Legendary, or Universal has called him. If anyone needs me to pick up that phone and make that call, I’ll take one for the team and do it with schoolgirl glee, though I don’t understand why it wouldn’t have happened yet.

Granted, it’s early on in the process, and they’re still casting all the leads that aren’t Dr. Ian Malcolm, so maybe the producers are letting the press do their work by seeing if he’s interested or not. (Does Hollywood ever actually work like that?) That doesn’t make much sense, though, considering Trevorrow and Derek Connolly’s script is supposedly a done deal at this point. It’s quite possible that they didn’t leave any room for the fan-favorite. I’m getting angry just thinking about such a slight. And who knows what will end up happening because of that. Oh, Ian Malcolm does, as he shows here with his Jurassic Park explanation of chaos theory. He knows for sure that we can never know for sure.

In the Huffington Post interview, Goldblum also shared that he wasn’t called for Jurassic Park III either. “No, nobody asked me,” he said, “but I was perfectly satisfied with the two that I did. I’m still satisfied with that and I’ll be the first in line to see anything else, so, you know.”

After being told that Independence Day director Roland Emmerich had discussed getting him back for the upcoming sequels, Goldblum confirmed that those conversations are happening. Emmerich understands.

“Yeah, they’ve talked to me about it and I’ve talked to them about it,” Goldblum explained, “and they’re excited and I’m anxious and eager to see — I haven’t read anything — what they cook up.”

It’ll be great to see Goldblum bring his genius to at least one sequel, but I don’t want to live in a 2015 that still hasn’t brought Ian back to the big screen in any way other than a 3D rerelease. Make a change. The world depends on it.