Jurassic Park IV may be a lot closer to production than you think.

Dark Horizons – “Jurassic Park III” and “The Wolfman” director Joe Johnston tells AICN that the idea behind a fourth Jurassic is in place and he’s definitely interested in being involved.

“There is a great story for the fourth one that I would be interested in getting involved with and it’s nothing like the first three. It sort of takes the franchise off in a completely different direction, which is the only way I would want to get involved” says Johnston.

He adds that it won’t be a storyline of people surviving a dinosaur attack on an island as “We’ve done that and it’s been done three times.”  The new idea however “would take it off in a whole other trilogy basically, but when it gets to that level it’s sort of about studios and Steven [Spielberg's] thing and who knows” he says.

Definitely good to hear they’ve got a solid story in mind for another installment.  The Jurassic Park franchise fits into a small category of cinema where I don’t care how many sequels are made.  It’s already understood that no sequel will ever match the quality of the first one, but any movie mixing humans and dinosaurs is still going to be somewhat entertaining.

This “whole new direction” thing had me intrigued, so I did a little investigatory journalism, no matter how many friends I lost or people I left dead and bloodied along the way, just so I could do a little investigatory journalism, no matter how many friends I lost or people I left dead and bloodied along the way.  In 2005, Spielberg said he was looking through his unused ideas from the first film and rereading the Crichton novels to plan out the next screenplay.  He said at some point in JP4, the characters would definitely be riding away from raptors on motorcycles.  That’s humans on the motorcycles, not the raptors (although that’s an awesome visual).  Spielberg’s idea just sounds like the first 3 films and contradicts what Joe Johnston recently described, so I’m not lending much creedence to this dated report.

Here are a few suggestions of my own plus a couple more recent rumors that I found while browsing the internet:

• No matter what Joe Johnston says, at some point in this movie, humans are going to be chased by dinosaurs.  So why not throw a species at us that we didn’t see in any of the first 3 films.  I’m thinking something involving humongous sea creatures.  Those things are flat out terrifying.
• Have some bad guy mainland scientists use Ingen technology to start breeding dinosaurs off of the Costa Rican islands, so the action takes place in the real world.  You could even film it Cloverfield style to add a new level of realism.  The potential for an incredibly suspenseful raptor hunt is huge here.  CG’s so good these days that a scene shot from the perspective of a few characters getting hunted down by raptors could be very intense and realistic.
• Bring back Alan Grant and the T-Rex in a big way.  DO NOT make Lex and Tim the main characters.
• Give me an anklyosaurus fight.  At least one, please.
• Make it a prequel.  There are tons of storylines that could be explored regarding the initial breeding of dinosaurs on Isla Sorna.  Plenty of things could go wrong, just as we saw in the opening scene of JP1 when the raptor eats that Costa Rican.
• DO NOT use the plot of the fan-made script that leaked online and fooled a lot of people in 2006.  The script involved a pregnant T-Rex being taken to New Jersey with a couple other dinos, and all hell breaks loose as the creatures take over the state.  As much as I would love watching a T-Rex feast on a main course of fresh guido, I simply cannot condone this retarded plot.
• DO NOT use the other leaked script that featured Ellie Sattler as the main character.  In this script, the government trains dinosaurs to carry weapons and uses them for battle purposes.  I think a Dino-Riders movie would be more realistic for Christ’s sake.
• Involve another bizarre dinosaur similar to the Dilophosaurus’s role in the first movie.  I’m thinking either the chameleon dino from The Lost World novel or something like the Suchomimus.  That thing’s crazy looking.
• Psychokinetically transfer the consciousness of a handicapped marine into the body of a velociraptor so he can infiltrate the dinosaurs’ tribe and take them down from the inside — oh wait, I’m thinking of another movie…

I’ll leave it to the readers.  What would you guys want to see in a fourth Jurassic Park?