'Jurassic World' Director Makes Controversial Statement Over Franchise

Jurassic World Dominion director Colin Treverrow admitted that there should have only been one Jurassic Park movie, so his goal with the sixth film in the franchise was to create a foundation for its future. Treverrow, whose film was battered by critics and took months to reach $1 billion, felt the new film needed to establish a world where people live alongside dinosaurs in the outside world. That way, movies would no longer have to start with the same problem of getting humans to the islands where dinosaurs live.

"I specifically did something different than the other films in order to change the DNA of the franchise," Treverrow told Empire Magazine in a new interview. "The previous five films are plots about dinosaurs. This one is a story about characters in a world in which they coexist with dinosaurs."

The filmmaker, who was lumping his own 2015 smash hit Jurassic World in that description, said the story is "inherently unfranchiseable" and there "should have only been one Jurassic Park." So, if Treverrow and Universal were going to keep making Jurassic movies, he wondered, "How can I allow them to tell stories in a world in which dinosaurs exist, as opposed to, here's another reason why we're going to an island?"

The answer to that problem came in 2018's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which saw the dinosaurs finally reach the mainland U.S. and escape captivity after their island homes were destroyed. In Dominion, Treverrow introduced several other characters he believes can headline future Jurassic movies. He told Empire there are discussions with Universal about future Jurassic movies.

"This movie clearly takes a real interest in creating new characters that a new generation is going to latch on to – Kayla Watts [DeWanda Wise], and Mamoudou Athie's character Ramsay Cole, who I think, in the Extended Edition, you really feel his purpose in a greater way," Treverrow told Empire. "And Dichen Lachman's character [Soyona Santos], who just gets arrested at the end... There's more to come."

The director also insisted he didn't set out to make Dominion the "epic conclusion" the Universal marketing team billed it as. Treverrow said it would have been better to see the movie promoted as the "end of an era" instead of the end of everything. Even he knows there is no way Universal will turn down the money another dinosaur movie will make.

"Because regardless of the cynical approach – of course, they're gonna want to make more money, which is what Jurassic World was about – a new dinosaur fan is born every day," Treverrow said. "Kids deserve these movies, and young filmmakers grow up on these stories – much like Peter Pan and The Wizard Of Oz and worlds we've returned to constantly."

The Jurassic Park franchise started with the 1993 classic, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Michael Chrichton's novel. Since then, the subsequent movies have all made plenty of money, but none have been as good as the original film. Treverrow revived the franchise in 2015 by introducing a new batch of characters led by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World. He then reunited the original Jurassic cast for Dominion, letting Pratt and Howard share the screen with Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. Dominion is by far the longest Jurassic movie, running 146 minutes, but the home video extended cut adds another 14 minutes.