What Do We Now Know About Jurassic World?

Hello everyone! Today, I decided to dedicate this blog post to the Jurassic World moving coming out real soon. But before I go into that, I have exciting news to share: my latest stop-motion video is complete! That's right! And Animal Face-Off: Lion vs. Nile Crocodile! In this episode, these two predators fight to the death over an animal carcass the lion has killed. Hope you like it:

How did you like this episode? You can voice your opinion in the comment box below. My next episode: Carnotaurus vs. Cryolophosaurus will hopefully be finished by the middle of this month.

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Nothing today. This is normally when I'd talk about news concerning the upcoming film, Jurassic World, but since that movie is my Topic of the Week, it would be redundant to talk about it here too. However, I will mention that another photograph of a dinosaur we'll see in Jurassic World was Comic-Con last week: a Tyrannosaurus! You can see the photo below, but you can read my comments on this picture further down in the Topic of the Week:

Tyrannosaurus rex will be prowling Jurassic World!

Topic of the Week by Christian Ryan

In January of this year, I did an article on what we know about Jurassic World, the four Jurassic Park movie in the franchise. If you read that article, you will know that this movie has a lo-o-o-o-ong history, starting all the way back in 2002! But you know what? We've learned a lot about this movie since then. In this article, I'm going to not only including information that I talked about in my previous article by the same name, but I will also talk about new things we've learned about the movie since then. Sure, much of this stuff I've already talked about in previous blog posts, but they are quite spread out. The purpose of this article is to condense all that information into one place. As you will soon see, Jurassic World comes from a very intricate and uncertain past; there were times it seemed the movie would not come out at all. Let's take a trip back to 2001.

Progress on the movie Jurassic World is popping now, but this wasn't always the case.

Back in 2001, Jurassic Park III came out into theaters. Until this point, a new Jurassic Park movie had come out every four years, starting with the first one in 1993. Back in June 2002, Steven Spielberg – the director of both the first and second films – wanted to create a fourth Jurassic Park movie, at the time it was going to be called Jurassic Park IV. The original plan was to have Joe Johnston – the director of the third film – to direct the third sequel and screenwriter William Monahan was supposed to write it. JP4 was supposed to be released in the summer of 2005, four years after the third movie.

Jurassic Park III was supposed to kickstart Jurassic Park 4, but problems with the script caused the movie to be postponed.

The script was completed and actor Sam Neill was supposed to return to play the part of Dr. Alan Grant. Jeff Goldblum also expressed interest in making a comeback in the fourth movie. This original script, unlike the other three movies, was not set in the jungle, but presumably on the mainland. The film was to begin the filming process in 2004.

So what happened? Well, the problem was that the script for the movie had to be rewritten . . . and rewritten again . . . and again. None of the scripts presented satisfactory to Spielberg. Special effects artist Stan Winston described the delay in this way: “[Spielberg] felt neither of [the drafts] balanced the science and adventure elements effectively. It's a tough compromise to reach, as too much science will make a movie too talky, but too much adventure will make it seem hollow.” This rewriting process continued for three more years.

Steven Spielberg was the director of Jurassic Park 1, 2 and 3.

Now we've arrived to the year 2008, and the world was still without a Jurassic Park 4. By then, there was no work being done on the film whatsoever, as Kathleen Kennedy – the co-producer of the first three movie – believed when asked if the film was in development in December 2008. “No...” she says, “I don't know. You know, when Michael Crichton passed away, I sorta felt maybe that's it. Maybe that's a sign that we don't mess with it.” While it was talked about briefly over the next few years by people like Joe Johnston, who said they were still making a JP4, there wasn't much work being done on the film, if any. It looked as if Jurassic Park 4 was destined to become extinct. What happened to bring this movie back from the brink of extinction?

Jurassic Park 4 went into a period of time of near inactivity, from 2005-2011.

To answer that question quite simply: Life found a way! By June 16^th of 2011, Spielberg and Mark Protosevich had met a couple of times to work on a potential story for JP4. If this version of the film were going to come to light, it would have been a spin-off of the first trilogy. Then, the breakthrough moment happened during Comic-Con of 2011 when Spielberg confirmed officially that there was going to be a Jurassic Park 4 coming out within the next two or three years or so. This news got me excited when I first read it. And Spielberg was right: from then on, movie updates were more and more frequent. The pre-production stage had begun!

Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver wrote the a version of what would become Jurassic World. Image Source.

On June 21, 2012, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who also wrote Dawn of the Planet of the Apes would be writing the upcoming movie. I am not sure what happened to Protosevich's version of the script though. 2012 was a great year for JP fans, as much news was released during this time. It was revealed that: Spielberg would be a producer, instead of director and Johnston (to my knowledge), Kennedy and Frank Marshall – the co-producer of the first trilogy – aren't involved in the project at all. A director still had not been selected. It was around this time rumors were debunked or created. One such rumor before this point was that the movie was going to feature was weird-looking human/dinosaur hybrids! That's just crazy! Rest assured, this myth was debunked. Another myth that came about was that Jurassic Park IV was going to be a remake of the first one! But it has been confirmed that it will indeed be a sequel (thank goodness).

These wacky-looking dino/human hybrid creatures were rumored to appear in Jurassic Park IV! Fortunately, this myth has been dispelled.

In 2013, Universal announced that Colin Trevorrow would be the director of Jurassic Park IV, which was set to begin filming that same year. It was also confirmed by the director and the dinosaur adviser of all Jurassic Park movies (past and future), paleontologist Jack Horner, that a new scary dinosaur never seen in the franchise before would make an appearance. One so scary, that you'd want to leave the lights on at night after seeing the movie. Finally, JP4 got a new name: Jurassic World. It wasn't long before actors and actresses were chosen for the film: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins, and one returning cast member from the first film, B. D. Wong will portray Dr. Henry Wu, just to name a few.

Chris Pratt (top and middle), Bryce Dallas Howard (middle), Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson (bottom) were some of the first actors and actresses to be announced for Jurassic World.

This was about as much as we knew by the time I wrote the previous article. Information beyond this point might contain spoilers, so read at your own risk: Also in 2013, Joblo leaked some information about the movie's plot, involving a brand new theme park created on Isla Nublar, the island from the first movie. And in 2014, Joblo again released some plot spoilers, but this time with more detail. So Trevorrow confirmed that many of rumors were indeed true (even if all the details aren't).

Jurassic World will take place at a brand new theme park with dinosaurs!

We now know that Jurassic World takes place 22 years after the terrifying events at Jurassic Park, on the island of Isla Nublar. Now, Jurassic World is a fully-functioning theme park with dinosaurs has been created in its place. 20,000 guests come to the park daily and there are many sights and wonders for the world to finally see. Along with dinosaurs, the park also features a golf course, a monorail, feeding shows for a couple different species of extinct animals, a petting zoo and etc. Amongst all this, Chris Pratt's ex-military character, named Owen, is conducting behavioral studies on a pack Velociraptors, though Joblo falsely reported Owen was training raptors. Trevorrow confirmed that there would be no trained or tamed dinosaurs in Jurassic World. Owen is really doing studies on raptors to see exactly where the relationship between humans and these incredibly dangerous reptiles stands.

In Jurassic World, Owen (above) is studying the behavior of Velociraptors.

But alas, all is not well at Jurassic World. Attendance has started to drop. This is a world in which Trevorrow imagines that people have gotten so used to dinosaurs that they are actually used to them. Like every zoo, amusement or theme park, it's time for something new to come to Jurassic World, so scientists create an all-new species of dinosaur that we now know will be called Diabolus rex by using DNA from different creatures: raptors, T. rex, snakes and cuttlefish. D. rex won't resemble all of these creatures though; Trevorrow assures us that this will still be and look like a dinosaur, not some Frankenstein-esque B-movie monster creation. But that's when things go horribly wrong . . .

We don't yet know what Diabolus rex looks like, but it could look something like this.

Personally, I maintain Diabolus rex is something similar to a Raptorex, pictured above.

But perhaps some of the best news to date was when Jurassic World finally started filming!!! They started filming in Hawaii (the location of the first and third films) on April 14, 2014. Isn't that cool? Then they moved to New Orleans to do some scenes there at the beginning of June.

The Today Show did two video segments on Jurassic World and gave us a look at the cool sets that will be featured in the movie, including the gift shop, where visitors will be able to spare no expense buying cool dinosaur toys and other souvenirs. Many leaks have been made on the internet in the past several weeks. Thanks to maps that have been uploaded to the internet, we know what the park will look like and thanks to a brochure leak, we now can finally know what the main attractions and most of the dinosaurs that might appear in the movie! According to the brochure, the park will feature a myriad of different species of extinct creatures. Check out pictures from the park brochure for more information:

This is a photo of the brochure for Jurassic World, featuring species of dinosaurs at the park.

As you can see, we've learned a lot about the Jurassic World movie over the past several months; updates are being revealed weekly, if not more so! Is there anything I haven't yet shown? Yes, yes there is. Even more recently, photographs were uploaded to the internet and give us our very first look at the dinosaurs of Jurassic World!!! One of them is leaked, and the other was uploaded by Comingsoon.net. You can view them below:

This is the Velociraptor we're probably going to see in Jurassic World, but with its jaws wide open!

 

Jurassic World has a T. rex!!!

One photograph is of the Velociraptor in Jurassic World. This dinosaur is covered in a beautiful shade of green and black markings. It is also different from the raptors of the third movie, because those were a different subspecies: Velociraptor antirrhopus sornaensis. The subspecies that will appear in this film are Velociraptor antirrhopus nublarensis. And of course, I'm sure you've already noticed the gnarly head of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the other picture. As with the Velociraptor, we don't know if this individual is male or female (it's presumably female because in the first movie, all the dinosaurs were initially made female so they couldn't breed until some of them switched genders). This T. rex is mostly brown, but it also has a hint of green. This T. rex appeared at Comic-Con 2014 last week. Doesn't it look awesome!

Last but not least, I can't fail to mention the first official poster from this year's Comic-Con for Jurassic World that you can see below:

An egg-caring mother Velociraptor has a view of the progress of Jurassic World's construction.

This beautiful portrait looks really cool and has been painted in such a way that it reflects the theatrical posters for the first Jurassic Park movie. This isn't the first version of the poster we've seen though. This was a special edition that is more night-oriented. You can read my remarks on the day-time version by clicking here.

After many months of shooting, the filming process of Jurassic World was finally completed yesterday! Finally, after over a decade, Jurassic World's future looks bright once again.

So there you have it, a brief overview of the history of Jurassic World, a history of optimistic beginnings, a future destined for extinction and an amazing comeback. It was an amazing and thrilling ride, learning about this film's progress through the years. It feels so strange that they've actually finished filming, I mean, the script of this movie was probably sitting in a dusty drawer at one moment, then it's alive and active once again. That's an awesome story . . . and it's not even completed yet. Undoubtedly, more updates on the movie's progress and specific details about the movie will be revealed in the next coming months. As always, you can continue to follow this blog so that you can read about some of the latest news concerning Jurassic World. In 316 days, on June 12, 2015, Jurassic World will “open it's doors” to the public and will take the claim as the greatest theme park in the history of mankind! Jurassic World's dinosaurs will roam the planet once again!

Jurassic World comes out on June 12, 2015!

Disclaimer: Many (or in some cases all) of the photographs and images above are not mine. If you own one or more of them and would like them to be removed, politely let me know via one or both of the email addresses above.