An adventure 60 million years in the making, Jurassic Park sparked five sequels, becoming one of the highest-grossing film franchises of all time.
The blockbuster hit, which was released in 1993 and was directed by Steven Spielberg, was based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel of the same name. The film was set on the fictional island of Isla Nublar, where wealthy businessman John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) created a wildlife park of real dinosaurs. After industrial sabotage leads to a catastrophic shutdown of the park’s power grid, a small group of visitors, including Dr. Allen Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and Hammond’s grandchildren, Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello), struggle to escape and survive the perilous island.
The action film won more than 20 awards following its initial release, including three Academy Awards for its technical achievements in visual effects and sound design. In 2018, the sci-fi adventure was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant.”
After the release of its first two sequels, Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001), the franchise took a 15-year hiatus before returning to develop the Jurassic World trilogy, starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth and final installment in the long-running franchise, which debuted in June 2022, united the stars of the 1993 original with Pratt and Howard for one final dino romp.
“It’s a big deal,” Howard revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly the week of the film’s premiere. “We had been talking about this sort of fantasy idea of what a third movie would be, where we were like, ‘Oh, my God, it would be Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern and Sam Neill.’ We always aspired to reach that point.”
“I obviously understood the allure of having the legacy cast back,” Pratt added during the round table. “I was just wondering how were we going to do it in a way that actually pays off these characters? And when [director Colin Trevorrow] told me, I was like, ‘That’s actually perfect. It’s a real story. It’s completely unexpected.”
Trevorrow, for his part, was mostly focused on making sure Dern, Neill and Goldblum’s return felt organic and authentic to who the characters had always been.
“From the very beginning, we talked about where Ian Malcolm is now. Has he changed, and if he has, how has he changed?” he explained to EW. “And Laura, with Ellie Sattler, an iconic character who had inspired so many young girls to become scientists and paleontologists, how has her life changed? Once we figured that out, we were able to create storylines that were echoing something that was coming from the actors.”
Scroll through to see where the cast of Jurassic Park is now:
