Whether you liked it or not, Jurassic World did exceptional business at the box-office.

The glorious return to Isla Nubular made Universal a whopping $1.67 billion in total profits and had the highest opening weekend and second weekend of all time. Naturally enough, a sequel had to happen. Last night, producing legend Frank Marshall made the announcement - where else - via Twitter that Juan Antonio Bayona has signed on to direct the sequel.

JA Bayona, as he's more commonly known, directed 2012's harrowing drama The Impossible and the utterly creepy 2007 horror The Orphanage. He's also done a spot of TV work, too, directing two episodes of Penny Dreadful and the upcoming dark children's fantasy, A Monster Calls, with our own Liam Neeson and Rogue One's Felicity Jones.

Bayona's an interesting choice, to say the least. Considering Colin Trevorrow's previous work before Jurassic World was the time-travelling indie comedy Safety Not Guaranteed and the almost-impossible-to-find Reality Show, JA Bayona has more truck with this kind of material than he did.

The Impossible was a large-scale production with some well-known actors, including Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. Likewise, A Monster Calls has both Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones and Sigourney Weaver in its cast and Penny Dreadful had some hefty production budgets behind it.

Not only that, all these films had an incredibly distinctive visual tone to them and were pretty dark and brooding. Could this mean that where Jurassic World was light, frothy and enjoyable summer fare, the sequel's going to be a much more violent and horror-driven experience? If that's the case, we're onboard because that's something that Jurassic World missed out on in a big way.

Jurassic World 2 is scheduled for a June 8th, 2018 release.

 

Via Twitter