Colin Trevorrow

Almost purely identified now as a writer-director specializing in the Jurassic World franchise (rebooting the original Jurassic Park franchise), Colin Trevorrow (birthname: Colin T. Trevorrow) shifted from documentaries and comedy features and shorts to blockbusters in under three years. As a teenage filmmaker, Trevorrow won prizes for his student shorts at the Mill Valley Film Festival, in Marin County in the Bay Area, where he grew up.

He created the video short, Home Base (2002), after graduating from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and saw it turn into one of the web’s earliest viral sensations. He made the documentary feature, Reality Show (2004), exposing the scandals behind the reality show, Rock The Party. After interning on the crew of Saturday Night Live, Trevorrow partnered with his fellow NYU student Derek Connolly and wrote several spec scripts. Trevorrow wrote (with Connolly) and directed his debut feature, Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), which competed at the Sundance Film Festival and earned a debut feature award nomination from the Indie Spirit Awards.

Colin Trevorrow wrote and directed the reboot of the Michael Crichton Jurassic enterprise with Jurassic World (2015), with Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Vincent D’Onofrio. The movie proved to be a phenomenal success, gathering a worldwide gross of $1.6 billion, holding a current rank of the seventh-highest-grossing film of all time (although, ironically, it was ranked only second in 2015, behind the even higher-grossing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which earned $2.06 billion). Trevorrow next directed the Gregg Hurwitz-scripted The Book of Henry (2017), with Naomi Watts and Mattie Ziegler, though it suffered from a poor box office and even worse reviews.

Trevorrow, with Connolly, co-wrote the original script, Intelligent Life, which has been attached to Steven Spielberg as executive producer via his Amblin Entertainment but has yet to go to production. The team also wrote a version of what became Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), and Trevorrow was also attached to the project as director; Trevorrow departed the project, which was rewritten by subsequent directors J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio. 

In the meantime, Trevorrow wrote (with Connolly) the Jurassic World sequel (and planned the second film in a trilogy), Jurassic World Dominion (2022), which Trevorrow was set to direct as early as 2018, assembling some of the previous cast, along with the return of Jurassic Park stars, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum. Trevorrow is currently attached to direct Intelligent Life (no date announced) and War Magician (no date announced) with Benedict Cumberbatch attached to star.