Jurassic World successfully relaunched the Jurassic Park brand on the big screen in 2015, taking in a massive worldwide box office haul of $1.67 billion and all but guaranteeing that co-writer/director Colin Trevorrow’s vision of a Jurassic World trilogy will, in fact, be realized. Trevorrow and writing partner, Derek Connolly, are putting together the screenplay for Jurassic World 2, but the former has handed off the responsibility of directing to Juan Antonio Bayona - in part, because Trevorrow is going to be busy prepping to helm Star Wars: Episode IX in the near future.

Bayona is slated to begin production on the Jurassic World sequel in February next year, with filming partly taking place in Hawaii like its predecessor (and Jurassic Park over twenty years before it) but a good chunk of photography also taking place on sound stages in London. Beyond that though, Bayona has now revealed that he will be drawing on a much larger budget on the next Jurassic installment that Trevorrow had to work with for his own dinosaur adventure.

Speaking to the Spanish-language magazine El Pais Seminal (via SciFied), Bayona revealed that Jurassic World 2 has a budget of $260 million, a significant increase from the $150 million budget reported for Jurassic World. The filmmaker also confirmed that that the sequel has a proper title now, but that it will be revealed at a later time, possibly around the time that principal photography gets underway in 2017.

[UPDATE: /Film is citing a “reliable source in the Jurassic World camp” as saying the budget for Jurassic World 2 has not yet been finalized and that the cost isn’t expected to fall even near $260 million, at this stage. The remainder of this article has been left as it was originally published.]

Although it’s not surprising that Jurassic World 2 is getting a larger budget following the runaway commercial success of its predecessor, $260 million is a big number, even by modern Hollywood tentpole standards (to compare, this year’s costly Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice has an official budget of $250 million). The larger budget can no doubt be chalked up to a few factors, among them bigger salaries for returning Jurassic World stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, who are reprising their respective roles as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing in the sequel.

In addition, it sounds as though Jurassic World 2 may require more dinosaur-related and/or digital visual effects that will be incorporated during post-production; hence it filming more on sound stages, rather than on location a la Jurassic World. While many a filmgoer will no doubt be pleased to hear that the Jurassic World sequel won’t be skimping on the dinosaur action sequences and set pieces, they also likely realize that this does not assure that the human characters and plot for the film will be any better (or, to be fair, worse) than those from Jurassic World before it.

Bayona made his name delivering compelling dramatic narratives told through the lens of such genres as supernatural horror (The Orphanage) and natural disaster (The Impossible) and has since moved on to bigger-budgeted fare, including this December’s A Monster Calls film adaptation. A Monster Calls, in particular, was lauded at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival for using its dazzling visuals to tell a stirring human story, so that certainly bodes well for Bayona’s efforts on Jurassic World 2 - and suggests that, fingers crossed, he won’t let the plot and human characters in the sequel get lost amidst $260 million’s worth of spectacle and dinosaurs rampaging.

Jurassic World 2 opens in U.S. theaters on June 22nd, 2018.

Source: SciFied

Update Source: /Film