Digging up the past: Sam Neill begins filming for Jurassic World 3
It’s been nearly three decades since Sam Neill first donned the iconic denim shirt, red cravat and cowboy hat.
But finally, the wait is over, with the 72-year-old reprising his role this week as palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant in the upcoming Jurassic World 3: Dominion.
See? 2020 isn’t totally doomed after all.
Neill, who has been busy filming his personal isolation project, Cinema Quarantino, took to Twitter to make the exciting announcement after remaining notoriously tight-lipped about his return.
“Hold onto your hats – gettin’ my old one back on this week, and facing off dinosaurs once again,” Neill wrote.
“Best yet. Excited and terrified – these things will kill ya.”
Hold onto your hats- gettin' my old one back on this week , and facing off dinosaurs once again. Best yet .Excited and terrified- these things will kill ya. With @LauraDern @BryceDHoward @prattprattpratt #JeffGoldblum @colintrevorrow I'm obviously a little more …grizzled now.. pic.twitter.com/zYtG5uadB2
— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) August 2, 2020
What we know …
Neill won’t be the only original Jurassic Park star breathing new life into the third instalment of the World spinoff series.
Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum will share the screen with Neill, and the reunion comes almost 20 years after their last prehistoric endeavour, Jurassic Park 3, was released in 2001.
This will be the first time Dern, who played Dr Ellie Sattler, and Neill reprise their roles, while Goldblum briefly returned as chaos theorist and mathematician Ian Malcolm in Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom.
Dominion started filming earlier this year, but went on a brief, pandemic-related hiatus in March before reportedly picking up again in July.
The film continues where director Colin Trevorrow’s short film Battle at Big Rock left off.
The short follows a family camping at a Californian national park who find themselves in the middle of a fight between an escaped triceratops and a rogue Tyrannosaurus rex.
Despite some painful stunt-related bruises, Neill’s co-star Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays park operation manager Claire Dearing, told Entertainment Weekly Live’s SiriusXM show the cast and crew were putting safety first.
“What feels really right about it is that there is this daily conversation, daily communication with all of the actors, with the key crew members and just us consistently being like, ‘OK, how are we going to do this? How are we going to do this safely?'” Howard said.
“And not making compromises that could undermine someone’s health.”
Raise your hands if you’re happy to be doing stunts again!! https://t.co/Rq1rtH05QH pic.twitter.com/n6IMR2X0ov
— Bryce Dallas Howard (@BryceDHoward) July 16, 2020
Jurassic World 3: Dominion is due for release on June 11 next year.
Jurassic Park’s Tricera-top moments
Back in 1993, Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park franchise both delighted and terrified audiences (looking at you, raptors in the kitchen scene).
As we eagerly anticipate the next instalment in the spinoff series, what better time to revisit and reminisce on some of the best Jurassic Park scenes of all time.
Welcome to the wild side
The first film was designed to take audiences on a jurassic journey, so it had us all waiting on the edge of our seats for Dern, Goldblum and Neill to see the dinosaur action – so we could finally see it for ourselves.
The unveiling of the dinosaurs demonstrated some of the best special effects work of the early 1990s, with the film winning two Oscars for best effects (visual and sound editing).
‘Clever girl’
We love a good one-liner, especially when it comes right before some hardcore action.
In this case, Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) delivers the line right before he becomes a raptor snack, solidifying it as one of the most iconic lines from the series.
Water glass scene
If you said the water glass scene from Jurassic Park wasn’t one of the scariest, most suspenseful scenes in modern cinema, you would be lying.
In fact, Spielberg used water tremor shots throughout the series in various puddles, foreshadowing some of the most ferocious fight scenes in the franchise.
‘Life finds a way’
“If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free … life finds a way.”
The series is pretty light on the dialogue, (but heavy on the screaming and the running away), so as far as iconic lines go, “Clever girl” is second only to this one.
Honourable mention: Goldblum showing off the goods
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