Unleash The Beast

How is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom planning to top its astonishingly lucrative predecessor? By saying goodbye to the past and setting up a chilling new future

- Nick De Semlyen

Denzel Washington couldn’t believe the numbers. As the winter of 2015 rolled on, he would sit in the make-up trailer for Western reboot The Magnificent Seven, thumbing through the pages of the latest copy of Variety or Hollywood Reporter. Then, when his co-star Chris Pratt rocked up, Washington loudly informed him — and everyone else in the vicinity — of the pertinent stat: the new domestic gross of Pratt’s last film, Jurassic World.

“It was really awesome to get pumped up by Denzel like that,” remembers Pratt with a grin. “When the movie set the record for the biggest opening weekend ever, he was like, ‘There he is... The $200 million man!’ Then it was, ‘Whoa, $400 million!’ Finally it was, ‘There he is... The $700 million man!’ It was so crazy. It felt like I was in a 200 mile-an-hour windstorm.”

Washington wasn’t the only one stunned by just how damn big the dinosaur movie had become. The first two sequels to Jurassic Park had done fine, but nothing like the original. Jurassic World, on the other hand, inspired prehistoric hysteria that took even its creators back, making $650 million in America (hey, you go ahead and tell Denzel Washington he’s $50 million off) and well over $1.5 billion worldwide, becoming the fourth-biggest movie of all time. “We were all really kind of euphoric and grateful,” says Bryce Dallas Howard, Pratt’s co-star in the movie. “Every day and every night was a celebration.”

But the flip-side of gigantic success is gigantic expectation. And for Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, who had received a T-Rex menorah as a congratulations gift from producer Steven Spielberg and was gearing up to write the next instalment, the pressure had just gotten even more immense.