Most people who know of J.A. Bayona know him from The Orphanage, which was the first film of his to get really big in the U.S. It probably helped that it was a horror film, and that it was produced by Guillermo del Toro, but Bayona is still relatively unknown. That’s all going to change as soon as Jurassic World 2 hits theaters, and he knows it. Colin Trevorrow took on the first Jurassic World after his indie Safety Not Guaranteed made a big splash, and now he’ll be in charge of Star Wars: Episode IX. Bayona’s A Monster Calls is about to open in American theaters within the next few weeks, and he’s excited about his blooming prospects, saying that he’s ready to take on a big blockbuster.

“After doing The Impossible and A Monster Calls I said, ‘I want to have fun now,’” Bayona told The Playlist. “So, let’s do a dinosaur film with Spielberg. It’s great, but at the same time it’s massive and way bigger than [the last] one.”

As for what he plans to bring to the series, he has plenty of ideas. One of the main critiques drawn against Jurassic World was how derivative it was of the original Jurassic Park, hardly adding in anything new in favor of overloading with an oddly cynical nostalgia. But Bayona assures that his movie is going somewhere completely new — so new, in fact, that he was surprised it was even suggested.

I think what is tricky about doing the fifth movie of a franchise is how will you bring in new stuff and still pay tribute to what we all know and the legacy of the film. So, it’s the balance between the new stuff and the old stuff. I think Colin did a great job in the first one finding the balance between what people are expecting and what people are being again. I was kind of surprised when he pitched me the story because it leads the story to a place that we’ve never seen before and it brings some of the most important elements from the other films and makes something with them. I thought that was very interesting. It’s the second chapter of a trilogy so it gets the story to a place that wants you leaving more and more.

Jurassic World 2 is said to have something to do with animal rights issues, using the dinosaurs in the park as a metaphor for how animals are treated today. It’s definitely somewhere the franchise has never gone before, and it’s exciting that a director as relatively new to the blockbuster scene will have some truly original material to work with.

Jurassic World 2 hits theaters June 22, 2018.

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