Frank Marshall talks Jurassic World 2, Indiana Jones 5, and The BFG's US flop

With over 100 producing credits to his name plus a few directorial ones too (‘Arachnophobia’, ‘Alive’, ‘Congo’), Frank Marshall is a bona fide Hollywood icon so we jumped at the chance to speak to the producer of ‘Jason Bourne’ when he was promoting this week’s DVD and Blu-ray release.

You can read everything he had to say about the future of the Jason Bourne franchise here and why he’ll never reboot ‘Back To The Future’ here.

We couldn’t resist asking him about a few more of his upcoming projects including ‘Jurassic World 2’ and ‘Indiana Jones 5’. Find out what he had to say about those highly-anticipated sequels, and his thoughts on why Steven Spielberg’s ‘The BFG’ failed to find an audience in the States below…

Yahoo Movies: As well as ‘Jason Bourne’ you’re involved in another franchise with an ageing hero in Indiana Jones…

Frank Marshall: Right.

He’s coming back in 2019, so where are you at with that and have you learned any lessons from ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, another franchise resurrected under Disney?

I’m kinda waiting in the wings here for somebody to tell me what we’re doing, so I actually don’t know they’re talking about. I’m more on the side of once there’s a script, I go get it made, so I don’t know where they’re going with this one. Now Lucasfilm is at Disney, so it’s a little bit different.

A bit more complicated?

Yeah.

Let’s talk about another film you’re a bit more directly involved with then – Jurassic World 2.

Absolutely.

That’s slated for 2018, so you must be shooting next year?

Yes. We’re in full-blown pre-production in London right now, out of Pinewood. We will be starting shooting in late February.

Jurassic World was a huge hit – it’s the 3^rd highest-grossing movie of all time – how do you plan to top that?

I don’t know!

[Laughs]

We certainly never thought that that would happen, but we’ve set the bar high for ourselves, and I think we just have to… we don’t look at it that way. We just have to think ‘what’s the story we’re going to tell, and how are we going to tell it?’

One of the really exciting things is that we have Juan Antonio Bayona as our director and he like Colin Trevorrow is an exceptional filmmaker but also a fan of the franchise, so I think we’re going to get a really terrific result.

With it having made so much money, does that mean you’re able to get a bigger budget?

Well, you would think so, but I don’t think the studio thinks that.

I also wanted to ask you about ‘The BFG’ – one of my favourite films of the year…

Oh, thank you!

The story is a huge personal favourite of mine, so to see Steven Spielberg bring it to life was so magical, but it wasn’t a big hit domestically – why do you think that was?

I think it’s kind of what you said. You’re familiar with the book and it’s been part of your whole life, but it’s different here in the States. The book is not as well known and certainly Roald Dahl is not as well known here.

I just think it’s in the marketplace vying for a place. It’s the kind of movie that I think needed a bit more time to be discovered, but certainly it was a such a wonderful experience again for us to work with the ‘E.T.’ team back together, and I think it’s one of Steven’s most wonderful fantasies. Combining the technological expertise with his filmmaking genius makes it a wonderful movie.

I hope it finds a new audience on home entertainment.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think people are really going to discover the movie, because it’s a movie that you need to sit back and take in. I think as I say there was to much competition out there for us.

‘Jason Bourne’ is available on Blu-ray and DVD now courtesy of Universal Pictures (UK).

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