Jurassic World Director Colin Trevorrow Says There Were Many Debates About Changing Franchise's Name

When the fourth film in the Jurassic Park franchise came in 2015 it arrived with a re-branding. That change played into the larger narrative of the film but also set up this new series of films that literally became a Jurassic world. Apparently when first conceived though, it wasn't an easy sell. While speaking on the Collider's Directors on Directing panel during the digital Comic-Con@Home event, Trevorrow and the other participants (directors Robert Rodriguez and Joseph Kosinski) were asked about a detail or decision they fought for and were proud of, and the title change was one of Trevorrow's answers.

"I can think of one. One is changing the name of the franchise took some convincing," the filmmaker said. "It was called Jurassic Park and, if you can imagine at the time they were pretty married to that. So me going in an writing a very carefully worded e-mail to Steven (Spielberg) asking if I could change the name of his franchise. It wasn't a fight but it took a weekend to figure that one out."

To Trevorrow's credit, the name change not only worked, it stuck. The 2015 film brought in over $1.6 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest grossing entry in the entire franchise (even when adjusting the original film's gross from 1994 for inflation). Universal has even re-branded the Jurassic Park elements of their theme parks to be Jurassic World, while also keeping the feature films going with that branding and even developing an animated series (with rumors of a live-action TV show too).

Though Trevorrow didn't return as the director for 2018's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, he has already stepped behind the camera for the upcoming third film, Jurassic World: Dominion. After a few months of being shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, production has resumed on the film which remains on the release schedule for a summer 2021 release. To his credit, Trevorrow revealed in a recent interview that the mandatory break ended up making the movie better.

"For many of us, Dominion was already the biggest creative challenge of our lives, before the lockdown," Trevorrow shared with Empire. "The shooting schedule really worked to our advantage – the first four weeks we put to film were mostly sequences with dinosaurs in them. So that allowed us to get a head start on VFX and workshop some of the newer elements without the pressure of a looming deadline."

It's unclear if this will be the final entry in the series or if Trevorrow will continue to shepherd new films to the big screen in the franchise. The new film will see the return of cast members from all five films including Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum from the original film.