Sam Neill will always be known as Dr. Alan Grant to fans of the Jurassic Park franchise created by Steven Spielberg decades ago. With the reboot/continuation of the franchise in recent years under director Colin Trevorrow, Neill is set to make a return to the world of dinosaurs with the upcoming Jurassic World 3. Unfortunately, the actor revealed that the current lockdown has thrown the shooting schedule for the movie into complete uncertainty.

"I was waiting in London for my stuff to start and then it became apparent it was going to close down in a day or two. We'll start as soon as we can. We're supposed to be in London but it's a complete mess at the moment... I'd like to think that maybe we could start or restart in this part of the world and then finish off in the studio. We're using the Bond stage to build these enormous sets in London. They'd like to use those, ideally, but if nothing's happening there, I don't know when we can get started."

Trevorrow had also previously stated that he was keeping busy at editing at home the parts of the film that they had managed to shoot before the lockdown, but considering they could only shoot for two weeks, the footage will probably run out soon. At this time, even if filming restrictions are lifted, the film studio is unlikely to risk the health of their large movie crew by sending them out immediately to start shooting again.

What this means is that the movie, which was supposed to come out next year, will almost certainly be postponed by several months, possibly a year. Fans will have to wait a good while longer to see Sam Neill reprise his role in the series, alongside Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern.

The events of the last movie in the series, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom considerably upped the stakes for the characters. The prehistoric dinosaurs, which had until then been confined to their island, were brought to the mainland. The movie ended with the implication that the entire world, or at least the US, has now become overrun by dinosaurs, and humanity will have to learn to live with the presence of prehistoric giants in their forests and cities.

Interestingly, a similar storyline was developed for another recent franchise centering around monstrous creatures. Legendary's Monsterverse has established a world where Godzilla, King Kong, and their titan cronies roam the world freely, with humanity having to learn to live alongside them.

How Jurassic World: Dominion chooses to resolve the problem of a world taken over by dinosaurs remains to be seen, and that is where Neill, Dern, and Goldblum's characters will come back into play. As survivors of the original Jurassic Park, perhaps they will be tasked with setting up a new remote home for the dinos, or they might be asked to help fight a new breed of super-dangerous dinosaur that the scientists of the franchise insist on developing in every movie. This news comes direct from Play.acast.com.