With production starting sometime this month on Universal's highly-anticipated sequel Jurassic World 2, the cast is filling up quickly, with another actor signing on. Ted Levine has signed on to star as an unspecified character in this highly-anticipated sequel, which Universal Pictures will release on June 22, 2018. It isn't clear how many more roles will need to be filled out before production starts next month in the U.K. and Hawaii.

Variety broke the news on this casting, with Ted Levine joining new cast members such as Rafe Spall, Toby Jones, Justice Smith and Daniel Pineda, who signed on last month. No details about any of these new characters were revealed, but they will join original Jurassic World stars Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and B.D. Wong, who return as Owen, Claire and Dr. Henry Wu from Jurassic World, respectively. It hasn't been confirmed if any of the other Jurassic World stars will be back, such as Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson, but Jake Johnson has recently confirmed that he won't be back as the technician Lowery.

Producer Frank Marshall teased last month that filming will begin in London, although an exact filming date has not been confirmed. While Colin Trevorrow is not returning to direct, with J.A. Bayona taking over at the helm, the filmmaker is writing the script with Derek Connolly and serving as a producer. The writer teased last August that this sequel will go off of Isla Nublar, and that it will address the notion of weaponized dinosaurs. It has also been confirmed that Jurassic World was the start of a new trilogy, which Colin Trevorrow is developing with Jurassic World executive producer and original Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg.

Colin Trevorrow also recently teased on Twitter that Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire would be wearing some bulky brown boots in the sequel, instead of the high heels she was wearing in the original, a costume decision that was highly criticized. J.A. Bayona also teased in an interview last month that the film will be much darker than its predecessor, and while the sequel will pay tribute to the franchise as a whole it will go places that fans haven't seen in the previous movies. The sequel currently has the June 22, 2018 date to itself, but it will open between Disney's animated sequel The Incredibles 2 on June 15, 2018 and Sony's Barbie on June 29, 2018.

J.A. Bayona revealed in a recent interview that Jurassic World 2 will have a whopping $260 production budget, a significant increase from the $150 million that Jurassic World, although an unidentified source disputed that claim, revealing that the budget isn't even finalized yet. 2015's Jurassic World broke The Avengers' opening weekend box office record with $208.8 million, which was shattered later that year with Star Wars: The Force Awakens' $247.9 million mark. It went on to earn $652.2 million domestically and $1.5 billion worldwide. Ted Levine is best known for playing the sadistic Buffalo Bill in Best Picture winner Silence of the Lambs. More recently, he starred on the big screen in the biopic Bleed For This and in Swing State.