A woman in trouble

Piranha was John Sayles' first feature as writer; he was to visit the animal-attack subgenre again soon with 1980's Alligator. Since then, he's made his name with thoughtful, character-driven pictures. Despite the title of Passion Fish, his post-Alligator filmography is composed almost entirely of mammal-based cinema. Sayles has also delved into the extra-mammalian or trans-mammalian, in the case of The Secret of Roan Inish and The Howling, and the particularly hirsute, in the case of Clan of the Cave Bear (and, again, The Howling).

At last, he'll be making his long-awaited return to reptilian cinema with Jurassic Park IV, for which he did some rewriting after William Monahan (The Departed) turned in a first draft. Much was made of Sayles' script, which hit the internet in 2004. It started off with dinosaurs attacking a Little League game and got crazier from there, eventually revealing a crack squad of battle-trained, genetically modified dinosaurs with names from Greek mythology and the ability to solve puzzles and use weapons. This from the writer of Lianna and Return of the Secaucus 7.

Since this plot is a good three years old and the script is still in development (plus strike interruption), it seems likely that we'll have something much more by-the-numbers, a new batch of overconfident folks on wooded islands. Frankly, this is a shame; a wild, nonsensical installment would certainly get a lot of uninterested (like me) folks back to the series. Hang on, I'll prove it.

Director is up in the air - it initially looked like Joe Johnston, who made the third installment, would get the gig, but his reps said definitely not. This seems overly firm, as Johnston hasn't directed a movie since Hidalgo in 2004 - anybody heard what he's been up to? He'd been connected to The Mummy 3, but that eventually went to Rob Cohen. Spielberg's name came up, of course, but that seems pretty unlikely too.

Laura Dern, the only confirmed returning cast member, suggested that David Lynch direct. Tell me, like-minded elitist movie people who turned up your noses at Jurassic Park III, aren't there times you'd like to pass up the Theo Angelopoulos and catch a matinee of David Lynch's dinosaur-commando Jurassic Park IV, written by John Sayles?