Filmmaker Colin Trevorrow is not prone to quoting his own movies in conversation, but when he sat down with IndieWire for late morning coffee earlier this week in New York City, one of his own lines seemed pretty apt to the interview at hand.
“There’s a line in the third ‘Jurassic’ movie, this little speech that Jeff Goldblum gives where he’s like, ‘They give you a lot of promotions very quickly and they don’t think that you’re going to look around and notice that they’re exploiting your fascination with these,’ and he holds up a little dinosaur,” Trevorrow said. “That whole thing was about this idea that our love for the things that we grew up on — cinema in general and specifically those franchises — run so deep that, in some ways, I don’t want to say you could be taken advantage of, because I appreciate [my opportunities] deeply, but you’ll put yourself in a situation that you would never otherwise put yourself in because you love that thing so much. You’ll make yourself vulnerable to failure, because you love that thing so much.”
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Trevorrow is speaking from plenty of experience. The filmmaker first rose to acclaim with the 2012 sci-fi dramedy “Safety Not Guaranteed,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Scott Screenwriting Award. At the fest, FilmDistrict picked up the film for an estimated seven-figure deal (the film was made for under $1 million) and released it later that summer, making over $4.4 million in box office returns.
As the story goes, the success of that film propelled Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly into Hollywood, and their follow-up to the festival gem was a giant one: 2015’s “Jurassic World,” which Trevorrow directed and the pair wrote together. In the years since his studio debut, Trevorrow has experienced major highs (like the “Jurassic World” franchise, including two films that Trevorrow directed, all three of which he co-wrote, making nearly $4 billion at the box office) and horrible lows (probably most of 2017, which saw the release of his critically maligned “The Book of Henry” and leaving the ninth “Star Wars” film, which he was set to direct and co-write).
Instead of tapping out of the film business, Trevorrow doubled down: founding his own production shingle, Metronome Film Co., in 2019 with the express intent to “champion bold storytelling.” Mostly, Trevorrow is a filmmaker who knows just how heartbreaking the business can be, especially for younger filmmakers, and he’s hoping Metronome might help change that.
Six years later, “Deep Cover,” the first film to be made under the Metronome banner is finally here. The comedy comes from an older script from Trevorrow and Connolly about a trio of mismatched London improv actors who get conscripted into helping the police infiltrate the city’s criminal underworld. The pair reworked their original screenplay alongside Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen (known in comedy circles as The Pin), and it’s directed by long-time TV helmer Tom Kingsley.
“It’s very populous kind of comedy,” Trevorrow said. “It’s definitely looking to make absolutely everybody laugh and it’s ridiculous and it’s kind of liberating to do that.”
The film also stars his “Jurassic World” star Bryce Dallas Howard, who he has remained close with over the years. “I wish she acted more, but I’m also in such support of her directing career, and our friendship is so based on being another director that I can talk to,” he said. “There’s some conversations that only directors can have with each other.”
Trevorrow mentions a lot of other directors in conversation, his compatriots and inspirations, the kind of people he can only have certain kinds of conversations with. He’s not only from the same generation of many of these fellow filmmakers, he’s also taken a (somewhat) similar route to them. That old story: rising indie filmmakers who had one or two well-regarded indies before being snapped up by studios for big-budget work.
The list of names is long and familiar: Chloe Zhao, Ryan Coogler, Jon Watts, Marc Webb, and Trevorrow handily finished my train of thought and added in Gareth Edwards, Rian Johnson, James Gunn, Ava DuVernay, and Nia DaCosta. When I noted that I often worry that we missed out on an entire generation of second or third indie films from some of these directors, Trevorrow nodded.
“You sound like me,” he said. “I say this: I definitely agree with that.” And that’s baked into the vision of Metronome.
“There’s so much that’s happened in [the last] 10 years when it comes to the kind of commodification of talent,” he said. “And we have seen, multiple times, filmmakers make one film that defined a voice and then a kind of larger, often corporate, I don’t want to say machine, feeling like, ‘Well, we can take that voice and apply it to something that will make a lot of money all around.’ And sometimes it didn’t work and sometimes it did. The part of it that frustrates me the most is I don’t necessarily believe that when it didn’t work, it was the fault of the filmmaker, ultimately. I think that matching subject matter and material with filmmakers is a huge thing that I focus on as a producer: Who’s the exact right person tell this specific story?”
Trevorrow is clear: he had great support when he entered the studio fray, but he’s heard plenty of horror stories about people who didn’t. “I was in a very fortunate situation where I had Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg and Pat Crowley, who were right there, answering questions for me and guiding me and kind of knocking the ball back into play all the time,” he said. “I know a lot of filmmakers who didn’t feel like there was really anyone to go to when they didn’t know what the hell was going on. As a producer now, that’s one of the things I’m really focused on, how can I provide that same thing to younger directors and make sure that they have the kind of support that I had and that I think others wish they had?”
As we talk more about the greater challenges and larger ramifications of being pulled into the studio space, Trevorrow mentions something both surprising and instructive: “I didn’t make any money off ‘Jurassic World.’” (Excuse us?)
He paused and laughed, “I know, you’re giving me that look. I didn’t really make money until the sequels. That’s kind of how it works. If you’re looking for the equation that’s leading to young indie filmmakers coming in and then staying in, it’s because you have to stay in longer, stay in the casino and keep playing before you can walk out with your bucket of chips.”
Trevorrow’s affection for filmmakers is also rooted in his instincts about them. No, not everyone can direct, and certainly not everyone can direct a big-budget studio film. “It is not everyone who can do it, but when I meet someone who can do, it’s sort of instantly recognizable,” he said. One example to him right now: DaCosta. She’s got it. That instinct about her, Trevorrow said, made him feel as if he understood Spielberg a bit more.
Trevorrow doesn’t mind busting open all sorts of myths, especially ones about himself and his trajectory, like that Universal plucked him out of indie obscurity after “Safety Not Guaranteed” and just gave him “Jurassic World.” Spielberg had actually been in the Trevorrow business long before that, having bought Trevorrow’s first script when he was 30.
“I had been hustling as a writer and written for every major studio by the time I did ‘Safety Not Guaranteed,’ and so I was a bit of a known quantity when it came to constructing large-scale movies,” he said. “But it was a little bit more Dickensian to say, oh, Universal found him in a 7-Eleven or whatever, but that wasn’t what it was. In some ways, it’s not the right story to tell, because people shouldn’t think that it’s that easy because it isn’t that easy. You do have to hustle for 10 years in order to even build your craft, let alone be seen as anyone who should be trusted with any kind of responsibility whatsoever.”
Another myth to bust: Trevorrow is not from Vermont. He grew up in Oakland, moved to Los Angeles, and decamped for Burlington after he sold that first screenplay to Spielberg. “I have made a lot of choices in the favor of when I go, my kids will remember me well,” he said. “I probably could have made more movies by now, but I would’ve definitely been gone more. But I can’t regret that. It’s not possible to regret making choices that have resulted in the two kids that I have and the relationship I had with my wife.”
He added with a laugh, “I do think that added to the narrative [about my rise]. I think people thought I was from Vermont, and we literally moved to Vermont because I was in the dentist’s office and I saw ‘Best Place to Live in America’ on the cover of a magazine.”
The thinking behind Metronome was a touch more considered. “It started with Annys Hamilton, who started as an assistant on the second ‘Jurassic’ movie,” Trevorrow said of his fellow Metronome producer. Because of his quick rise in the production world, there was one thing that Trevorrow didn’t have: his producer. “I felt like, well, why don’t over time, in order to have that level of understanding of who I am and what my mission is, we’ll just kind of build it ourselves,” he said.
When Metronome was first founded in 2019, it was just in time to ride out the pandemic and two Hollywood strikes. “I wouldn’t mind a little stability, a little consistency sounds great for me,” Trevorrow said with a laugh.
The Metronome office is just four people — including Hamilton, fellow producer Rebecca Linfoot, and associate Zach Abbs — which seems like a smart way to keep focus tight (and, let’s be honest, costs low). “The goal was, let’s find a way to delve into producing and actually produce, not just be a director’s vanity shingle, but really actually get on the ground and do the job, ideally in the indie space,” Trevorrow said.
“Deep Cover” was entirely independently financed, made for the low (very low) eight figures, some from the bank, some from Trevorrow himself, with Amazon coming in for a negative pickup deal. The film premiered at SXSW London, screened at Tribeca this week, and will be available on Prime Video this Friday.
“We were on the streets of East London with cameras running around, and it was thrilling for me,” he said. “I loved being able to provide those guys with a kind of opportunity to do what I got to do on ‘Safety,’ which is to show what they are capable of. … [They have] new original voices that have to find a way. If indie film is largely impossible, how are they going to make their ‘Safety Not Guaranteed’? Who’s going to do that? I feel like we do have a bit of a responsibility, as filmmakers who have secured the bag. Maybe you make less money in your lifetime, but if when you’re done, you can look back and you can point to a couple of filmmakers who they got their opportunity because I made a little less money.”
They’ve got lots in the works now, including a new film to be directed by Bryce Dallas Howard (and written by Trevorrow and Hamilton), plus Caleb Hearon’s “Trash Mountain,” which the viral internet star wrote with Ruby Caster, and will star in. That film was originally set to be directed by Lilly Wachowski, but the director’s dance card filled up, so she’s moved into an EP role.
She did, however, point the team to the film’s new director: Kris Rey, who previously directed “I Used to Go Here” and “Unexpected,” and worked with Wachowski on the series “Work in Progress.”
“Raising money for that movie has been extraordinarily difficult. A small indie queer movie in 2025, which doesn’t necessarily have an international presence?,” he said. “Yet I’m so deeply determined to make this movie. In lot of ways, the energy from that is more satisfying for me than it would be to go jump on another franchise or anything like that. It’s just what keeps me excited about movies.”
Speaking of other franchises… When I mentioned to Trevorrow that, to this day, when you Google his name, the first thing that auto-populates is “Colin Trevorrow Star Wars Script,” he laughed. “I’ve not Googled my name in seven years,” he said.
In 2015, Trevorrow was announced as the director of what would become the ninth installment in the main “Star Wars” franchise. He and Connolly wrote a script, too, entitled “Duel of the Fates.” When they left in 2017 (about seven years ago!), “The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams returned to direct the film, complete with a new script from Abrams and Chris Terrio that became “The Rise of Skywalker.” In 2020, when Abrams’ film had only been in theaters for a few weeks, Trevorrow and Connolly’s script leaked online. Some fans loved it, some didn’t (so, a “Star Wars” script then?).
Trevorrow didn’t talk about that experience for a long time, and when he did, he was honest: it was sad. Nearly a decade on, he has a little more distance from it. “I got to sit across from George Lucas for hours and hours and talk about ‘Star Wars,’” he said. “I got to build this whole, really comprehensive [idea of] what a movie it could have been. It was just this extraordinary two years of my life. Of course, I had tremendous, deep, profound sadness and even depression that lasted for years over the loss of that. That said, if I had my ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ moment, I couldn’t say no, I wish it had never happened, because I wouldn’t have gotten to do it. It’s a tough one.”
No matter what happened with “Star Wars,” it did at least reinforce one thing for Trevorrow: he loves making movies. “I’ve always loved the process, I’ve never had a bad experience making a movie,” he said. “I’ve had bad experiences releasing movies and that’s usually the part I dread a little bit.”
Yes, he’s talking about “The Book of Henry.” And no matter how much guff he got for the film — enough to kick any desire to self-Google clear out of him! — Trevorrow can’t regret that one either. While he said he still feels a “real, genuine, true sadness when it comes to ‘Book of Henry’ and when it comes to the ways that my intentions have been received in certain scenarios,” he’s pragmatic about it now. “You sign up for it. You really do,” Trevorrow said. “You just know that, if you’re going to be a storyteller, you have to accept that you’re forging a relationship with the audience and it’s your job to sure that that relationship reflects your soul. The hardest part is when I do something that does reflect my soul and it doesn’t go down well, wait, do you not like my soul?”
That’s true even when it comes to his “Jurassic World” films, including “Dominion,” which earned the worst reviews of the trilogy, and made the least amount at the box office, despite bringing back original stars and marketing promising it would end the franchise in style.
“‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ was absolutely what I was thinking about at that moment, the dangers of genetic power in our world, so I made a science thriller,” Trevorrow said. “And the answer I got back was, ‘That plot needs to be about dinosaurs,’ and I’m like, ‘OK, fair.’ … All three of those ‘Jurassic’ movies, they were about what I was thinking about at the time. ‘Jurassic World’ is about how corporations are going to eat our childhood dreams. ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ is about how animal trafficking is not a good idea, it could lead to horrible disaster, and is also deeply cruel. Then the third movie is obviously what it is. I do think, in time, as we look back on all of those movies, it will lead to a longevity and a rewatch value, because I don’t think that they’re fluff.”
He added with a smile, “Probably still could have been more chomps, I guess.”
He’s not yet seen Gareth Edwards’ “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” but he’s very excited to partake, and as a fan, not even a filmmaker. “He asked me if I wanted to see it, but I just don’t think you want to see a ‘Jurassic’ movie alone in a screening room,” he said. “I want to go with my kids and my family. We’re going to go to the big IMAX theater and check it out.”
Next up the Metronome docket: a Trevorrow-directed film, the one he “very well maybe doing next,” a recently announced untitled conspiracy thriller that Paramount will produce. While news of that film hit the trades just last month, Trevorrow said things are bit further along than news stories might have indicated.
“In the late 1980s, there was a Las Vegas TV news journalist named George Knapp, who reported on a whistleblower who came out of the desert saying that he’s laid hands on [UFO] craft and it takes it from there,” he said. “It’s very much in the vein of ‘Zodiac’ or ‘All the President’s Men.’ I love movies that are building up to a moment when they’re going to publish the story. It’s my favorite kind of structure, and this is one of those kind of movies.”
And there’s one more Metronome film in the ether that Trevorrow is also on deck to make: his long-gestating take on the myth of Atlantis. When I asked, “What’s the movie you’ve always wanted to make?,” it was this one.
“I really love ‘Atlantis,’ that’s the one I’ve always wanted to make,” he said. “Atlantis, not like an underwater thing, but the story of our first civilization that had a lot of the kinds of technology we have now, that had a true government and its own sets of morals. It fell into the sea and then we had to start all over again. That movie is essentially a bunch of young people trying to tell the people in charge, ‘You’re focused on the war, but actually what’s going to happen is that comet’s going to hit the earth and we’re all going to perish, pay attention to this.’ I feel like great sci-fi, great fantasy, it always snaps into what young people are feeling at a given moment.”
That film would also give Trevorrow the chance to tap into “the most rarefied air in storytelling”: to build an entirely new myth.” He’s not holding his breath just yet, though. “Will I ever get to it? I don’t know. Movies that cost a certain amount of money that are technically original are really hard these days,” he said. “So what I’ll have to do is make a couple movies that actually really work and then maybe that’ll be my reward. I know what I’m working for.”
How nice, I said, that you still consider making a movie its own reward. “To be able to make a story that you want to tell? Absolutely,” he said. “For some reason, I’m not burnt out on it and I don’t entirely know why, because I should be.”
That’s what he’s putting into Metronome and this next step in his career. As we circled back on the idea of “losing” filmmakers to their studio work, Trevorrow looked back on his own filmography.
“I feel like, hopefully, when you watch my ‘Jurassic’ movies, you’ll see that I was telling my stories that I care about, for better or for worse,” he said. “To me, there are certain filmmakers, we never really lost them, whether they’re doing something really big or small or somewhere in the middle. All we should ask of any filmmaker coming up is, don’t lose yourself, try to put a piece of your soul in everything. Because, in the end, when we look at your body of work, we’re going to know why you were here.”
“Deep Cover” screened at the SXSW London Festival and the Tribeca Festival. It will start streaming on Prime Video on Friday, June 13.
