Can Jonathan Bailey revive the Jurassic Park franchise?
We don’t want to get our hopes up, but there are reports that Jonathan Bailey is confirmed for a lead role in Jurassic World 4.
Bailey seems to be everywhere at the moment – and we’re not complaining! After turning up the heat in Fellow Travelers, there’s more Bridgerton on the way, and we’re counting down the days until the Wicked film adaptation is released which will give us Bailey as Fiyero Tigelaar.
The universe established by the 1993 Jurassic Park film – an adaptation of the book by Michael Crichton – has spawned numerous sequels. A new instalment would be the seventh film in the series. While we’re always happy to see big dinosaurs running around and eating people, we’re going to need a fresh take – recent films seems to have been pretty much rehashing the original storyline in various incarnations.
While we don’t know much about Jurassic World 4, so far the signs are a bit mixed. The director is Gareth Edwards – he’s got form with big monsters and big budgets, his best work was probably Rogue One from 2016. The script is by David Koepp based on Michael Crichton’s writing. Koepp has been working on Jurassic scripts from the early days, so this doesn’t really feel like a fresh approach.
Sadly, it seems unlikely that we’re going to see Laura Dern reprising her role as Dr. Ellie Sattler.
As well as Bailey, the only other confirmed casting appears to be Scarlett Johansson, but there are suggestions that Colman Domingo and Dev Patel may be making an appearance. Jonathan Bailey, Colman Domingo, and Dev Patel all in the one film – all getting sweaty, their shirts torn off, and rolling around on top of each other? That sounds like a movie we’d like to see!