We live in a world of reboots and remakes. Everything that we grew up on — that is now old — is new again. Last year, we had a Star Wars film, a Rocky film, and the return of the Jurassic Park franchise with fun reboot, Jurassic World (cue the comments claiming the movie was stupid). While there is something special about taking an old concept and reinvigorating it for a modern audience, filmmakers are usually careful to imbue these reboots with plenty of homages to the original material. 

So what about the next Jurassic World film? In the first one, we saw Ian Malcolm’s book on the desk of Jake Johnson’s character, but there was no real reference to Jurassic Park‘s original protagonist, Alan Grant, portrayed in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III by actor Sam Neill.

So will be seeing this character return to the big screen in the next outing? It doesn’t seem likely.

Speaking with ShortList, actor Sam Neill came forth with some interesting theories as to what could have happened to the character in the time between Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World.

“I think the problem is that no one knows where Alan Grant is anymore. He’s retired from paleontology. He’s sick to death of dinosaurs and running. He’s not quite as fleet of foot as he was, and he’s now retired to Dayton, Ohio, and has a very successful accountancy business. I think that’s what’s happened to Alan. Either that or he’s dead.”

In addition to his either dead or accountant theory, Neill went on to speculate that no amount of therapy would help him recover from all the dino-terrors he faced in both movies.

“How do you recover from all of that stuff? I don’t think therapists are trained to deal with post-dino stuff. No. I don’t think you get over it. Accountancy would be one way.”

While fans may not buy this theory, at the moment, it seems to be a moot point, as Neill went on to confirm that he has yet to receive a call from Universal to reprise his role. 

“The call hasn’t come. And no one can find Grant. He’s disappeared. Someone found his hat. His hat was floating on the Hudson river, but that was the last ever heard of him.”

While this doesn’t exactly seem promising, we can never forgot how unreliable actors are when it comes to actually returning to franchises. In the grand scheme of things, they’re always the last to know. In addition, just because Neill won’t be back for the second film doesn’t rule out the fact that he could return for a third installment. In today’s world, no character is dead until we see a body — and even then that’s debatable. And Neill doesn’t seem to be particularly serious about any of his comments, so the actual fate of his character is still up in the air.

What do you think of Neill’s comments? Would you like to see Alan Grant return to the Jurassic Park franchise, or do you think that moment has long since passed?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below!

Jurassic World 2 hits theaters on June 22, 2018.

SOURCE: ShortList

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