Colin Trevorrow will dive into 'Atlantis' for Universal, post-Jurassic World

Colin Trevorrow still has to finish shooting Jurassic World: Dominion, but he's already lined up his next project, post-dinosaurs. Deadline was the first to break the news that the writer-director-producer will re-team with Universal Pictures for a movie about the famous legend of Atlantis.

But there's a twist.

"Unlike previous incarnations of the mythical city as an underwater kingdom, Trevorrow’s Atlantis is set on a lost continent in the Indian Ocean between Africa, India and Oceania. It is a multicultural civilization with its own advanced technology," writes Deadline.

Dante Harper (co-writer of Alien: Covenant) is penning the screenplay based on an original story conceived by Trevorrow and Matt Charman (Bridge of Spies). Harper also wrote the spec script that led to Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, which starred Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.

Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The idea for Atlantis reportedly came to Trevorrow in 2018, but he held off on commissioning a script in order for production designer Kevin Jenkins (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) to do some research and build the movie's visual aesthetic. The director is producing under his Metronome Film Co. banner, which is working on another endeavor at Universal: a musical film adaptation of Catherynne Valente's 2018 Hugo-nominated novel, Space Opera.

Thanks to some recent news about an unmade sequel to Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire and SYFY WIRE's interview with that movie's screenwriter, Tab Murhpy, the lost city, or continent (or whatever you wanna call it) is really having a moment in pop culture. And don't forget, James Wan is returning to an underwater version of the mythical civilization in Aquaman 2.

Jurassic World: Dominion plans to ramp up production in the UK next month.

(Universal Pictures and SYFY WIRE are both owned by NBCUniversal.)