Jurassic World Director Colin Trevorrow To Search For Intelligent Life
This article is more than 2 years old
Colin Trevorrow has only directed two feature length motion pictures: 2012’s indie time travel dramedy Safety Not Guaranteed and the upcoming return to the Jurassic Park franchise, Jurassic World. They certainly represent the opposite ends of the spectrum, production wise. One is a cute, clever sci-fi film, while the other is a massive, big-budget spectacle of the highest order. After his foray into dinosaur country, however, he’s going a wee bit smaller for his next film, Intelligent Life.
Now that Jurassic World is in post production, The Hollywood Reporter says that Trevorrow, as well as his writing partner Derek Connolly, who co-wrote both Safety and Jurassic World, are returning to the project they’ve been working on for some time.
After their first film together, they planned to move forward with a film called The Ambassador. Then Steven Spielberg got their number, and you can imagine how making a movie like Jurassic World might take up most of your time. The Ambassador has now been rebranded as Intelligent Life and has a home at DreamWorks, with Frank Marshall on board to produce.
At this point it’s unclear if anything aside from the title has changed, but originally The Ambassador followed a United Nations delegate who carries the responsibility of making first contact with alien life. When he falls in love with a mysterious woman, it turns out that she is in fact an alien herself.
According to sources, it’s similar tonally to Safety Not Guaranteed, which is more of a character driven film that just so happens to exist within a sci-fi framework. Inspired by a classified ad, their first film follows a young woman (Aubrey Plaza) as she falls in with a man (Mark Duplass) who claims he can travel through time.
I like the sound of this. As excited as I am to see Chris Pratt fight dinosaurs in Jurassic World this summer, Safety Not Guaranteed is great—fresh, funny, smart, and sweet—and I would like to see what else they have in store in a similar vein. Even if the studio wants Trevorrow and Connolly back for more Jurassic movies, it looks like they’re positioning themselves so that Intelligent Life should show up first.
