While a fourth Jurassic Park movie was years in the making, with producer Steven Spielberg going through a number of different permutations before settling on a take from director/co-writer Colin Trevorrow, development on Jurassic World 2 has been much more swift. That’s partly because Jurassic World scored $1.6 billion at the worldwide box office, but also Trevorrow and his co-writer Derek Connolly did the heavy lifting by creating new characters, new scenarios, and setting the franchise on a new path.

Trevorrow didn’t return to helm the currently untitled Jurassic World sequel because he had already committed to developing and directing Star Wars: Episode IX, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been intimately involved in bringing Jurassic World 2 to the screen. A Monster Calls and The Impossible filmmaker J.A. Bayona is directing, but on a recent appearance on Josh Horowitz’s HappySadConfused podcast, Trevorrow revealed that he’s actually been serving as the on-set writer for Jurassic World 2 in addition to co-writing the screenplay:

“Derek and I wrote for about the first eight months and then when he had to move on I kept going and I was actually the on-set writer on that movie. I would show up with my backpack every morning just like, ‘What do you need, sir?’ (laughs).”

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Image via Universal Pictures

But just because Trevorrow is involved in the screenwriting doesn’t mean Jurassic World 2 will be the same movie:

“It is thus far my favorite creative collaboration that I’ve ever been involved in in that J.A. Bayona is a completely different kind of filmmaker and thinker than I am, yet we do have a lot of things in common so I was able to craft something specifically for another filmmaker that I admire. I built a Spanish horror thriller with dinosaurs in it that I probably wouldn’t have built for myself.”

Moreover, Trevorrow goes so far as to say that he thinks Jurassic World 2 will be better than his own film:

“I gotta tell you man, I think that’s gonna be a better movie. I just do. It’s just deeper, it’s more character-based, it definitely leans into suspense especially in the second half. It does have the big action in the middle and there’s a sequence in the middle that I’ve been watching…I’ve started to see stuff come together and it’s just insane. I apologize to those who thought they were never gonna need to see another Jurassic World movie, because I think J.A. Bayona is gonna prove [them] wrong.”

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Image via Universal Pictures

Thematically the film is also set to explore new territory:

“It’s definitely about our greed and the depths of depravity that humans will sink in order to satisfy their need for profit. We’re certainly continuing with a lot of those themes but in different ways. But without spoiling anything there’s definitely new themes that have never been examined in a Jurassic movie before that we’ve gotten into that I really think will expand people’s idea of what these movies can be, that it’s not just people running away from dinosaurs on an island.”

The sequel recently gained a pretty tantalizing addition in the form of Jeff Goldblum reprising his role as Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and while Trevorrow was tight-lipped on the character’s inclusion, he did say that he went back to the source material for some of his dialogue:

“I did rely on [Michael] Crichton for a lot of it. I used a lot of Crichton dialogue.”

Trevorrow is currently in the midst of the press tour for The Book of Henry, his latest directorial effort, while also developing and writing Episode IX. It sounds like he’s doing as much heavy lifting as he can on Jurassic World 2 now because when Bayona enters post-production, Trevorrow will be gearing up to start shooting Episode IX in early 2018. At that point, the guy’s hands are gonna be incredibly full.

But for now, he makes a strong case for a dynamic, different Jurassic World 2. We’ll find out when the film hits theaters on June 22, 2018. Listen to the full podcast appearance over at HappySadConfused.

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Image via Universal Pictures
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Image via Universal Pictures
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Image via Universal Pictures
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Image via Universal Pictures