Here’s a turn up for the books. We know Jurassic Park 4 has been in development forever and it was always suggested by the man himself that Steven Spielberg would direct since he’d done two of the previous three outings. Well, Collider have found out that isn’t going to be happening as they spoke with the world famous Director about his new movie War Horse.

This is the quote that summed it all up:

“I don’t want to talk about Jurassic Park 4 yet – it’s too early – but I can tell you that I’m not directing it. I’m producing it though.”

After requestion a bit more infomatrion about whether the movie would be a reboot or a sequel, the response back was:

“I can’t say. I will when the time is right, but for now I can’t talk about it.”

He continued to talk about his new movie, Robopocalypse and fill us in on some updates to the Tintin sequel which will be handed solely to Peter Jackson to direct:

“I’m not going to say which stories have been chosen for Peter Jackson’s sequel because Peter and I agreed that we weren’t going to let that information out yet,” he said. “The script is now being written. It’s more than one book, but it’s not three books, so that means it’s two books. It’s two and a half books that we’re combining with ‘The Secret of the Unicorn.’ And Peter will start working on the film this year. When he’s done shooting ‘The Hobbit,’ he’ll begin his performance capture work with the actors later in 2012, which I’m very excited about. And of course, I’m hoping I’ll be able to direct the third one. I’d love to do the third one because I had so much fun on the first one.”

War Horse, Steven Spielberg’s latest tearjerker, is out in UK cinemas early in January next year but a few screenings have already taken place and in New York last month the director sat down to answer questions on the film and his career in general.

Entertainment Weekly columnist and contributing editor at New York Magazine Mark Harris moderated the session and there’s even a Jurassic Park shoutout from a questioner, so hey – go crazy.

There’s nearly an hour to spend in the company of one of the industry’s most celebrated figures and with Tintin and War Horse behind him and his long awaited Lincoln biopic and the prosepct of Jurassic Park 4 on the horizon there’s plenty to talk about.

Here’s the Q&A,

Steven Spielberg spoke a few moments ago in San Diego at the Comic-Con panel for Tintin and revealed that a fourth Jurassic Park film is officially underway.

This announcement confirms the rumours reported last month that Spielberg was indeed keen on resurrecting the franchise from the doldrums of its third film, and now it appears they have a story and the treatement is being written right now.

We have a story, I can announce right now. We have a writer… Hopefully, we’ll be making Jurassic Park 4 in the near future – in the next two or three years.

Spielberg’s dinosaur star has all but faded after the rather disappointing third instalment back in 2001, but reports suggest that the director is in talks with screenwriter Mark Protosevich to reboot the Jurassic Park franchise. The pair worked together previously on a planned US remake of Chan-wook Park’s fantastic revenge flick Old Boy, that collapsed due to rights problems.

It’s kinda no wonder Mr Spielberg has hopes to bring the Michael Crichton story back, after a series of successful franchises taking many a million dollar at the box office recently.  Another plus is the advances in CGI and 3D since early 2000; adding a little extra spice to a world of blood hungry, rampaging veloceraptors and T-Rex’s (not the Marc Bolan kind of course…though that would take the movie in a whole new and interesting direction).

Nothing is in stone as of yet, but if discussions have already begun, you can damn well bet Universal will be chomping at the bit to get their hands on a potentially epic cash triceratops like Jurassic Park.

Source – The Hollywood Reporter.

Joe Johnston is currently prepping for the release of The Wolfman which is due out early next year. He was responsible for the direction in the 3rd Jurassic Park movie and AICN caught up with him to talk about his new movie but drifted onto talking about Jurassic Park 4.

“There is a great story for the fourth one that I would be interested in getting involved with and it’s nothing like the first three,” Johnston told the site, “It sort of takes the franchise off in a completely different direction, which is the only way I would want to get involved.”

He added that it likely won’t be another storyline about a group of people struggling to survive a dinosaur attack. “We’ve done that and it’s been done three times…”

From the sounds of it, they won’t be going back to the island again  “Why would anybody go back to that island?” Johnston said. “It was hard enough to figure out the second and third reason for them to go, but it would take it off in a whole other trilogy basically, but when it gets to that level it’s sort of about studios and Steven [Spielberg's] thing and who knows. I think we are at that point where we are due for another one if we are going to do it.”

The fact that they’re even talking more about another Jurassic Park excites me as I’ve loved all three of them. The first was obviously by far the best but i’d be quite happy to see another movie if Spielberg is kind enough to bring us one.