Colin Trevorrow Almost Didn't Direct 'Jurassic World'

Indie film director Colin Trevorrow has a huge career ahead of him, but he came this close to missing out on the big leagues.

Trevorrow got his big break in the directors chair for Jurassic World, and has now signed on to close out the new Star Wars trilogy in 2019 when he directs Episode IX (as well as writing and help Jurassic World’s sequel. These are some of the biggest jobs in Hollywood, and now, we know his success in the industry all came down to one moment in his 2012 film Safety Not Guaranteed.

According to the The Hollywood Reporter, Steven Speilberg would have passed up Trevorrow for the Jurassic World job if it weren’t for the very end of Safety Not Guaranteed. Part of the tension of the movie relies on the audience wondering if Kenneth (Mark Duplass) has really built a working time-machine, or if he’s just crazy.

“Had that machine not worked, Colin would not have directed Jurassic World,” Spielberg told The Hollywood Reporter. Spielberg went on to say that he liked Trevorrow because the director “ … spoke so much like a moviemaker, not like an essayist. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about movies in very analytical ways, and some of that is impressive and some of that is just analytical.”

Big takeaway here? If you want to impress Steven Spielberg, and potentially get yourself into the driver’s seat of huge franchises, make sure your time-machines are real and you aren’t an analytical essayist!