Exclusive: Jurassic Cinematic Universe In The Works
What will a Jurassic Cinematic Universe look like? Here's what we've learned about Universal's plans moving forward.
This article is more than 2 years old
To create a great cinematic universe, you need a lot of characters, a lot of room to expand the world, and a way to always be raising the stakes to make things interesting and exciting. For a franchise that has brought in billions, and has wild science experiments and dinosaurs waiting to raise the stakes again and again, it’s bizarre to look at how little Universal Pictures has done with the Jurassic films so far. Now, that’s all about to change. One of our trusted and proven sources has learned that Universal Pictures wants to turn its franchise into a complete Jurassic Cinematic Universe.
What could this mean? It could mean multiple spinoff series. Marvel has Thor and Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy, where the characters sometimes meet up in movies like Endgame. For a Jurassic Cinematic Universe, we could be looking at other island locations for new parks full of dinosaurs. We could be looking at stories where the scientists get new ideas and create dinosaur hybrids. Or, if they really want to raise the stakes Fast & Furious style, it could mean scientsts creating dinosaurs and sending them into outerspace. Honestly, the wilder the better for these kinds of stories. Our source didn’t disclose if Universal has an idea for where they want to start on this project yet, but it seems likely that they’re putting all ideas on the table. When your franchise began with a movie like Jurassic Park, it has to go pretty far to continue surprising audiences.
Jurassic World revived the 1990’s franchise in 2015. Chris Pratt’s character, Owen, works at the newly rebuilt park full of dangerous dinosaurs. The return was based on the idea that despite the disasters from the previous films, humans just want to see some big dinosaurs stomp around. This is the same idea Universal has built their franchise on so far, and it has worked wonders for them. Jurassic Park released in 1993 and earned a stunning $912 million at the worldwide box office. We may be more adapted to hearing numbers like that today when there are so many major franchises nearing the billion mark, but in 1993 this was a particularly stunning milestone. When the series came back with Chris Pratt for Jurassic World, it brought in $1.67 billion at the worldwide box office. These numbers definitely justify a Jurassic Cinematic Universe. Clearly, the audience is here for it.
Both of these films took place at the same location. This may be a bit of a problem as Universal works to expand into a complete Jurassic Cinematic Universe. The connected movie universe most audiences are most familiar with is Marvel. They have tons of characters and locations they can pull inspiration from in the comics. While Universal has the Jurassic Park novel from Michael Crichton, he only released two books, which were later combined. The Jurassic franchise will need to introduce more new characters and locations in order to create spinoff series and develop their cinematic universe. This is an obstacle, but not one that’s impossible to imagine them getting over soon.
To flesh out the Jurassic Cinematic Universe, they’ll likely have a big writer’s room meeting, or something similar, where spinoff series are approached. In the book, at one point, dinosaurs seem to disappear and escape the island. That’s a disaster waiting to happen. There’s also more to explore in the past, when they first developed the dinosaurs. It seems more likely that what they might do is create more park locations. Have the Jurassic Park franchise expand, not only with more locations and characters, but with new dinosaurs and hybrids capable of new things. The writers can pull from new discoveries by paleontologists to expand the dinosaurs we see on screen. Perhaps the genetics team attempts to make the dinosaurs safer, only to make them even more intelligent.
Universal has a world with scientists doing wild things and dinosaurs running amuck. The lays some fertile ground for writers to come in and create a Jurassic Cinematic Universe worthy of screen time. It’ll be exciting to hear how they bring this around to create something fun for years to come.
