‘Jurassic World: Dominion‘ Will Not Be the Last Film in the Jurassic Park Franchise. Recently, Jurassic World producer Frank Marshall spoke with Collider regarding the third film in the second trilogy and shared insight into the future of the franchise.
In the interview with Collider, Marshall was asked if Dominion would be the finale of the franchise and he immediately shut down that idea with an exuberant “No.” and added, “It’s the start of a new era. The dinosaurs are now on the mainland amongst us, and they will be for quite some time, I hope.”
Not too much in known about the plot points for the film, but the studio has shared Dominion is not an ending, rather the true beginning for the future of the franchise. Creating an all new world where people and dinosaurs will have to learn to live with one another.
Photo Credit: Universal
Jurassic World: Dominion will also see the return of three original cast members from Jurassic Park, Laura Dern (Ellie Sattler), Jeff Goldblum (Ian Malcolm) and Sam Neill (Alan Grant). The franchise veterans will be joining Chris Pratt (Owen Grady),Bryce Dallas Howard (Claire Dearing) and Isabella Sermon (Maisie) from the second trilogy. It has also been shared that Dern, Goldblum, and Neill will have major roles in the film and will not take a back seat to the action in Dominion.
Chris Pratt was so excited to share the news and said it wasn’t easy keeping it quiet, “Man, I can’t tell you anything, but I can tell you it’s going to blow your mind. It’ll be the biggest and best yet. They spare no expense and they’re bringing everybody back.” Chris Pratt added that he’s had to keep it a secret for a long time. “I’m a professional secret-keeper in these movies,” he joked.
Are you excited to see the original cast together on screen again? How do you think Alan and Ellie will return? Do you think the characters will mesh well with Claire and Owen? How will the dinosaurs and humans learn to live with each other again? We would love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments.
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Disney and Pixar’s new movie Onward may have magical creatures, grand adventures, and a sentient pair of pants, but like any Pixar classic, it’s also full of heart. Onward tells the story of two elf brothers, Ian and Barley (voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt), who were raised by single mom Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) after their father passed away when they were young. The brothers discover that their father left behind a wizard staff and a spell that could bring him back for a day. But magic isn’t as easy as it looks, so when they are only able to resurrect half of their father — and yes, we mean that literally — Ian and Barley must team up for an epic quest to meet the rest of their dad before time runs out. We recently sat down with director Dan Scanlon, producer Kori Rae, and stars Chris Pratt and Tom Holland to dig a little deeper into what made Onward a truly magical experience for everyone involved.
Though Onward is Pixar’s first foray into the traditional fantasy genre, it may be one of the most personal stories to come from the studio as it was directly inspired by Dan Scanlon’s real life. His own father passed away when Dan was a year old and his brother was three, so the two always wondered what he was like. “That question became the seed of Onward, which was, ‘What if you could meet him? What if you could have one day? What would you learn? What would you ask?’ And then we added elves and sprites to that incredibly sad story,” Dan shared with a laugh.
While the movie is definitely emotional (both Dan and Kori admitted to crying at various stages of the filmmaking process), what really won over people at Pixar was the human relatability at the movie’s core. Early on, Kori Rae’s way in was her relationship with her sister. “I would talk about my relationship with her and how she supported me and what she did for me. And as we had filmmakers come on, everybody started telling their stories, and what was amazing was that while it’s a personal story, it’s also got so many universal elements to it that I think will resonate with the whole world.”
The connection to a sibling became an important element for the two brothers in the movie. Even though in real life he is an older brother, Tom Holland felt an immediate kinship to his character, younger brother Ian. He described himself in his early teens as a “nervous kid [who] had a hard time at school,” but his experience joining the cast of the Broadway musical Billy Elliot brought him out of his shell. He explained, “It wasn’t until I went on [that] adventure [that] I became more confident in myself and I believed in myself. And what drew me to this character is that we get to see that entire journey that I went on as a kid in him throughout this film.”
As for the real-life family who helped inspire the movie, we asked Dan Scanlon what it’s been like to share Onward with them. He enthused, “I kind of made [the movie] for [my brother]… I showed [it to] him two weeks ago, and he loved it. He was blown away. He gave me the longest hug, and we talked for hours about it after, and he’s been texting me about it.” Dan and his brother are also excited and nervous to share Onward with their mother. “It’s her experience too in some ways, in losing her husband and raising these two kids alone. I mean, in a lot of ways, I think it’s more her story in terms of the drama of it. She’s one of the funniest people I know and one of the best storytellers.”
For a celebration of love and family you’ll want to share with more people than just your siblings, join us for the heartwarming journey of Disney and Pixar’s Onward, in theaters now!
The team behind Disney and Pixar’s Onward goes behind-the-scenes on the making of the film.
In Disney and Pixar’s newest film, Onward, audiences join teen brothers Ian and Barley as they embark on a quest to reunite with their dad, whom they lost at a young age. Like any great Disney and Pixar movie, this film has a great cast (including Chris Pratt and Tom Holland, just to name a few!) and is full of heart, humor, and compelling characters. As if that weren’t enough, here are four more things to look forward to when the film arrives in theaters on March 6!
A World Blending the Fantastic with the Familiar
From a Monster world hidden just behind our closets to a kitchen in Paris, Pixar films taken place in some pretty interesting locations. Onward, which is set in a suburban fantasy world, is no exception.
For the filmmakers on Onward, placing the film in this setting helped them create a space where there could be both possibility and scarcity, fantasy yet also familiarity. A world where, through magic, Dad could potentially come back — but also a world in which that magic would not necessarily be easy to produce. “If we had other people who knew magic in the world, Ian and Barley could easily just go down the street and ask that person to fix Dad for them, but we knew we couldn’t do that because we knew we needed the characters on the journey,” shared production designer Noah Klocek.
After several iterations, the team refined that suburban fantasy world even further, eventually settling on a style that was 70% familiar and 30% fantastic. Oftentimes, the 30% was easy to achieve, as the team soon realized that by simply placing an elf or a troll in a scene, they would instantly meet that threshold. It was balancing that out with the familiar that proved to be more difficult. To get inspiration for the familiar, the team took a research trip to Los Angeles, where they surveyed houses in the neighborhoods of Los Feliz and Frogtown and also looked at everyday mundanities like parking lots and power lines.
Magic Unlike Anything You’ve Seen Before!
Another major challenge for the team was determining exactly what magic would look like in the film. We’ve all seen many a fantasy film with magical elements in the past, but how do you craft a version of magic that can both fit the tone of your tale and also be completely unique to your film?
It takes a brave soul to embark on such a quest, and luckily Pixar’s internal club The Fellowship (consisting of fantasy geeks throughout the company) were the perfect people for the task. Together with director Dan Scanlon, they determined the three essential components of a spell:
Heart’s Fire – This is the passion you bring to a spell that makes it come to life.
Magic Decree – Used in the more intermediate to advanced spells, this is the specific state of mind you need to be in to cast the spell.
Assist Element – An ingredient necessary for the most advanced spells, without which your spell would be rendered useless. In the case of the Visitation Spell attempted by Ian and Barley to bring back their dad, the assist element is a phoenix gem.
Using these components as a guide, the team was then able to move on to more features of the magic, like what a spell should be named and what magic should look like. When it came to the look, the team considered many factors, including the color of the magic, how one’s confidence can affect the shape and style of the magic, and how much space a piece of magic should take up on the screen — which came together to create the final version seen in the trailers.
TROLLS!
Pixar is famous for their incredible Easter eggs, and Onward is no exception. Look closely while watching the film and you just might spot a troll or two or three, or nearly one in every frame! How did these trolls end up there? You can thank the Crowds team for that!
On an animated film, it’s the Crowds team’s job to populate and animate the background characters of a shot. For Onward, these included everything from elves to satyrs to goblins. The magical species that was exceptionally hard for them place were the trolls. Animation Crowds Supervisor Sequoia Blankenship shared, “When we’d put a troll in a shot, it’d be so big that it would immediately suck up all the visual oxygen of the scene.” Determined to find a way to still incorporate trolls as background characters, the team took it upon themselves to not only find the right places for the trolls in scenes with lots of characters, but also the right place for trolls in every scene. Voila! An Easter egg is born!
And of Course, Awesome Animation
One of the great challenges but also great opportunities of animating Onward was determining the movements of several characters that don’t exist in our real world, like a person missing a top half, or the part-horse, part-man centaur. In these cases, the animators really had to think outside the box and use their imaginations to craft movements that felt fantastic, but not outside the realm of familiarity.
The character of Dad offered that perfect challenge. “With Dad, we really had to ask ourselves, how can pants communicate and express emotion?” shared directing animator Allison Rutland. Before the actual animation even began, the animators did several green screen tests with Scanlon to test how a pair of pants would do things like sit down, be pulled by a leash, or perhaps even do a high-five. (For that, a leg would lift to tap a hand.) The flop of Dad’s top half offered the perfect jumping-off point for scenes where they needed Dad to show a bit of sass and attitude for comedic effect. In contrast, more subtle elements like foot tapping ended up becoming effective tools for Dad to connect in heart-to-heart moments with his sons. Combine all those elements together and you’ve got a character who can be both funny, sincere, and have a true personality — and do it all as pants. In short, the power of animation!
Making a movie, let alone an animated movie, requires a lot of people to work together among a lot of moving parts. Yet when those parts come together in just the right way, it can be pure magic! Experience that magic first-hand when Onward comes to theaters March 6.
