As announced in Variety, frequent J.J. Abrams and Pixar collaborator Michael Giacchino has signed on as composer for Jurassic World, the upcoming Colin Trevorrow-directed Jurassic Park sequel. Giacchino’s previous work includes the soundtracks for Lost, Cloverfield, and both of the rebooted Star Trek movies, as well as non-Abrams projects like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and Up, for which he won an Academy Award.
Interestingly, this isn't Giacchino’s first Jurassic Park soundtrack. The composer got his start writing for video games, including The Lost World: Jurassic Park, a Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn tie-in game for the second Jurassic Park movie. One can only marvel at the winding vagaries of fortune that have brought him, full circle, back to the franchise nearly two decades later. Clearly, life found a way.
Nevertheless, Giacchino has some dinosaur-sized shoes to fill with this score, given the obvious comparisons his work on Jurassic World will draw to John Williams’ classic score for the original Jurassic Park—and, of course, to that song someone made out of Jeff Goldblum’s weird laugh.