Colin Trevorrow Talks Jurassic Word Return, Star Wars Detachment

Colin Trevorrow has his eye on the next generation of filmmakers.

After shepherding his Jurassic World trilogy to the box-office tune of nearly $4 billion worldwide, the filmmaker turned his attention to his production banner, Metronome Film Company. Trevorrow’s mission is to create opportunities for up-and-coming filmmakers in the same way that Steven Spielberg once did for him on 2015’s Jurassic World.

“Because I’ve had some success in my career, my absolute top priority is not just paying it forward, but also being able to introduce new talent to move us forward,” Trevorrow tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We don’t have farm teams in Hollywood, and I think that it’s a responsibility of filmmakers to identify who’s next. A lot of these icons that we have now were identified by another filmmaker, and that’s something I would love to have on my record.”

Around 15 years ago, Trevorrow and his frequent collaborator Derek Connolly heard a story about the NYPD’s “Knockoff Squad” and their use of civilians in undercover sting operations to combat Canal Street’s abundance of counterfeit goods. Trevorrow and Connelly then wrote an early draft of Deep Cover, which alters the real-life premise to feature improv actors who go undercover and climb the ranks of a criminal underworld.

Eventually, Deep Cover’s reins were handed over to director Tom Kingsley and writing duo/comedy double act, Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen. As producer, Trevorrow recognized that the trio’s comedic backgrounds were best suited for the now well-received action-comedy that’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Trevorrow’s Jurassic World leading lady, Bryce Dallas Howard, leads Deep Cover’s talented ensemble, one that is also highlighted by Orlando Bloom and the funniest performance of his career. Howard plays an improv teacher named Kat who laments the direction of her career, but things soon take a turn when she’s approached by a London cop (Sean Bean) about low-stakes undercover work. From there, she drafts Bloom’s Marlon, who models his acting career after Daniel Day-Lewis despite only having a pizza commercial or two to show for it. The improv undercover team is rounded out by another underachiever in Nick Mohammed’s Hugh, except he merely wandered into Kat’s class moments earlier. 

Trevorrow and Howard have remained close since Jurassic, especially as she dives further into her own filmmaking career. They’ve both been tied to reboots of Disney’s Flight of the Navigator (1986) in 2012 and 2021, respectively, and so they’ve generally been a mutual sounding board for each other.

“I saw every draft [of Flight of the Navigator] that she’s been working on as she’s been looking to crack it. So, yes, we’ve definitely connected on it,” Trevorrow says. “We even talk about her Star Wars shows and any other project that she has. It’s pretty rare for directors to have other directors that they can communicate with and maybe even complain to sometimes, so she’s been wonderful in that way.”

As for the Jurassic franchise, Trevorrow isn’t surprised that a new chapter known as Jurassic World Rebirth is releasing just three years after his previous feature. Bear in mind, his 2022 installment, Jurassic World Dominion, was marketed as the “epic conclusion of the Jurassic era.” That may still be true for the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World characters that ultimately joined forces, but the franchise has continued to expand off the big screen through a second Netflix animated series, Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, as well as theme park attractions and assorted merchandise. Thus, a return to the silver screen was inevitable.

“We built something that’s strong enough to move forward, and I’m very proud of that,” Trevorrow says. “I also know that pretty much every time a child is born, a new dinosaur fan is born. So I don’t think the interest in seeing dinosaurs is ever really going to run out.”

Before he was slated to helm Jurassic World Dominion, Trevorrow was in the process of developing Star Wars: Duel of the Fates, his version of what would later become Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). In 2017, he parted ways with Lucasfilm over creative differences, which allowed him to conclude his Jurassic World trilogy. In 2020, a Duel of the Fates’ script and early concept art leaked online to an overwhelmingly positive response. (A TIE fighter from Trevorrow’s scrapped film is on display at Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.)

In 2022, when Trevorrow sat down with me for Jurassic World Dominion, he admitted that the internet’s response to those leaked materials provided a much welcomed spring in his step. However, he’s still had to keep the franchise that defined his youth at arm’s length, at least until this summer.

“My son and I have both decided that we are going to watch all of Andor this summer. But I do have to be honest; it has been a struggle for me to engage with anything Star Wars-related just on an emotional level,” Trevorrow admits. “So, to the team that made Andor, I guess I can say that you’re the ones who’ve finally brought me back in.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Trevorrow also discusses the one actor he’d immediately hire for a real-life undercover operation. Then he sheds light on his next directorial effort about Area 51, which is being co-produced by Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort.

***

Over the years, I’ve asked a few actors in spy movies if their acting and/or improv ability would make them a decent spy in real life, and Deep Cover explores a very similar premise with undercover police. Is this something you’ve long wondered as well? 

Well, I definitely am someone who has improvised my way out of some sticky situations in life. I think we’re all that way. [Deep Cover] actually started from a story that [co-writer] Derek Connolly and I heard long ago. There were cops in New York that were asking actors to buy fake Fendi purses down on Canal Street so they could sting [the counterfeiters]. And we thought, “God, what if they were improv actors? What if they were so good that they got deeper than any cop ever could?” So a very organic story began to form. 

There are some ideas that are like peanut butter and chocolate, and there are some that are like peanut butter and salmon where they’ll never taste good. But improv actors going deep undercover felt like a peanut butter and chocolate combination.

Last time we spoke, you mentioned that your favorite bar in New York is a place where stand-up comedians practice their sets. So, as soon as I saw the trailer for Deep Cover, I imagined that you came up with the idea while hanging out at this establishment.

I was probably talking about the bar above the Comedy Cellar. I love stand-up. I love improv. I love comedy in general, and I’m just a fan more than I am a comedy writer or a comedy director myself. And to be around that energy, it can sometimes be almost a depressive energy. There’s sadness to that life. There’s also a genuine creative energy that I am a little bit addicted to, and I found it there. I understand why a lot of film directors love Saturday Night Live. Steven Spielberg is obsessed with it; he goes all the time. It’s because it’s the opposite of what our job is. There’s nothing but what happens in the moment, and whatever you get is what you get. So I understand where that addiction comes from.

Of all the gifted improvisers or method actors you’ve worked with in your career, who else would you add to the movie’s undercover team?

Jake Johnson would be the best we’ve ever seen. He’s the kind of person you want with you when you’re in any kind of trouble. You will survive with him. So I would say Jake, for sure.

Were you ever in the mix to direct? Or was it always something you eyed for somebody else?

It was always something I eyed for somebody else. Maybe way back in the day, when Derek and I first wrote it, I might’ve considered it, but I hadn’t directed a movie yet at the time. So no one really brought it up, and it was something that I started thinking about again a good 10- to 12-years later. It felt like an opportunity for me to hopefully introduce a younger comedy director [Tom Kingsley] to the world and a younger pair of comedy writers [Ben Ashenden & Alexander Owen]. I’ve been very fortunate in my life that people have taken a chance on me and bet on me. So I feel like I need to give some of that back and start betting on some younger people, and this really felt like a great vehicle for that.

Did you pitch this project to Bryce Dallas Howard on the set of Jurassic World Dominion? 

No, it was much later. Bryce was actually the last addition to this, and she came in at a really crucial moment when we really needed someone to make it complete. This is an independent film. It was financed independently in London. We’re very fortunate that Amazon is distributing it, but it’s a bit deceptive. Hopefully, we made it look like a movie that has a certain amount of money and resources behind it, but it’s a very low-budget movie for what it is. And piecing together a movie like this and getting financing — whether you’re in the U.K. or in the U.S. — is harder than ever these days. It really took each one of those actors coming on board to build it into a more and more viable investment for people. So Bryce was really the last one to put it over the top, and I’ll always be very grateful for that.

Overall, how would you review the experience of running a production company in this post-pandemic and post-strike version of the industry?

Well, I didn’t have a production company before [the strikes and pandemic], so I don’t know what it was like then. There’s just something deeply satisfying and rewarding about getting on the ground and producing a movie. The word producer has a lot of different definitions; no one entirely knows what a producer does. But having had some great ones, I know what a great producer does. So I was there every day to make sure that our director, Tom Kingsley, and our actors had all of the resources they needed to succeed. I wanted to make sure that we were at the best possible locations, so that everything felt honest and real, and that we were using our resources to their greatest effect. It was a challenge that I wanted and needed. There were moments when we thought it wasn’t going to happen. All the way up until weeks before we made it, it could have easily fallen apart, but there’s a real energy in that.

But the main objective of Metronome, as you said, is to pay it forward?

Absolutely. This is our first film, and our next film is called Trash Mountain. It was written by Caleb Hearon, who’s a brilliant stand-up comic. Kris Rey is directing it, and Lilly Wachowski is involved. These are not big-budget films, and they’re honestly not the kind of things that often have a shot at getting made today. But because I’ve had some success in my career, my absolute top priority is not just paying it forward, but also being able to introduce new talent to move us forward. We don’t have farm teams in Hollywood, and I think that it’s a responsibility of filmmakers to identify who’s next. Steven Spielberg has done that a lot, and so have Chris Columbus and Robert Zemeckis. A lot of these icons that we have now were identified by another filmmaker, and that’s something I would love to have on my record. Whenever I’m done here, I hope I was able to give an opportunity to a couple great talents.

In 2021, Bryce, as a director, was linked to a Flight of the Navigator reboot, as were you in 2012. Have the two of you ever discussed your individual takes at all?

Yeah, all the time. I saw every draft that she’s been working on as she’s been looking to crack it. If you were born at a certain moment, it’s one of those ones that you have a fascination with. As a kid, the idea that all of your friends and family have aged while you’re still a kid, it’s just the absolute worst nightmare. So, yes, we’ve definitely connected on it. We even talk about her Star Wars shows and any other project that she has. It’s pretty rare for directors to have other directors that they can communicate with and maybe even complain to sometimes, so she’s been wonderful in that way.

We’ve reached the obligatory Jurassic portion of the interview. 

Here we go!

Were you surprised at all that a new Jurassic World movie is being released just three years after Jurassic World Dominion? 

No, I wasn’t. I was so deeply entrenched in what we were building over all of that time. It wasn’t just the films and the two animated series on Netflix; we have the toys and the theme parks and everything else that we did. So we built something that’s strong enough to move forward, and I’m very proud of that. I also know that pretty much every time a child is born, a new dinosaur fan is born. So I don’t think the interest in seeing dinosaurs is ever really going to run out.

Your Jurassic World trilogy explored dinosaurs in populated areas far more than the Jurassic Park trilogy did, but for the most part, the franchise’s primary action still happened in isolated corners of the world. This new movie, Jurassic World Rebirth, is also returning to an island. Is there a reason why there seems to be a reluctance to truly set the majority of these films’ runtimes in highly populated areas? Would it be too unwieldy? Or too Godzilla? 

I always applied the same rules to dinosaurs as I would to real animals. When a tiger is set loose in a city, they capture it pretty fast. So the idea that these wild creatures would even want to come close to a city was a question I would always ask, and we managed to find ways to make it make sense. I think dinosaurs running wild in the streets of a city does take a bit of a step away from what Michael Crichton created, and that was always my feeling. But we did find ways for them to interact with our world as comprehensively as possible. And when I say that, it’s not just the films; it’s our animated shows as well. They did a lot of that, especially the new one [Jurassic World: Chaos Theory].

The new film repurposes the raft sequene from Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel, something Spielberg’s original film had to cut late into the process. Was that something you guys ever discussed adapting in some way, shape or form?

It wasn’t, but I love that they did it, and I can’t wait to see it. Jurassic Park is just one of those classic pieces of science fiction that has inspired so many questions about how we are handling genetic power in our world today. That speech that Jeff Goldblum gave over sea bass [in Jurassic Park] continues to resonate, and so it doesn’t surprise me that anything that Michael Crichton did at that time would still be awesome in 2025. 

You were just in the news to direct an ‘80-set Area 51 conspiracy thriller, and it’s one of several projects you’ve been tied to the last few years. Atlantis is another such example. Can you say what the leader in the clubhouse is yet? 

That [Untitled Conspiracy Thriller] actually is the leader in the clubhouse. Getting an original film made is extremely challenging these days, and this one is important to me. I have actually spent time in Las Vegas with the journalist, George Knapp, [whose reporting brought Area 51 to the fore]. At this particular moment, I think it’s a story that will allow us to face our fascination with crafts from elsewhere in the galaxy, in a way that is much more grounded and reality-based. It’s about a journalist who’s sourcing facts to figure out what is true, and I think that is an approach that will allow the cynics among us to potentially ask some questions that maybe we wouldn’t really ask ourselves.

We’ve previously talked about the positive response to your Star Wars: Duel of the Fates materials that somehow wound up online. Perhaps you still need some distance, but just out of curiosity, have you been able to press play on Andor? 

I’m going to. It’s not that I don’t know it’s brilliant; I do know that. My son and I have both decided that we are going to watch all of Andor this summer. But I do have to be honest; it has been a struggle for me to engage with anything Star Wars-related just on an emotional level. So, to the team that made Andor, I guess I can say that you’re the ones who’ve finally brought me back in. I know that what they’ve done is extraordinary, and I can’t wait to watch it.

***
Deep Cover is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.