Jurassic World: The Red Queen

Jurassic World: The Red Queen is the upcoming sequel to my Jurassic World reimagining (https://jurassicmainframe.forumotion.com/t877-jurassic-world-an-alternative-vision). I have the pleasure today to give you quite a few information about it along with a small foretaste.

Synopsis

More than a year after the apocalypse that saw the fall of Jurassic World, former park director Claire Dearing, despised as she is judged responsible of the disaster, and animal behaviourist Owen Grady, her partner, are contacted by the former CEO of InGen, Benjamin Lockwood, to take part with the resumption of Operation Fallen Kingdom on behalf of his foundation. Their mission? Help with the transfer of the last animals of Jurassic World, housed in a facility in Costa Rica, to his estate in California. In exchange for this, Lockwood promises to testify in favour of Claire Dearing during her upcoming trial.

But InGen’s situation, whose survival depends on the operation’s success, is more than precarious and its rivals know this, waiting for the ideal moment to take possession of the company or destroy it by endangering the operation. During the latter, the couple will be led to investigate some of InGen’s secret research, whose outcome might restart Jurassic World’s nightmare elsewhere...


A few key points...

- As the eruption of Mount Sibo had already been depicted in the previous fic, The Red Queen only adapts some of Fallen Kingdom’s plot points, mainly those of its second half.

- The Red Queen will be different in terms of scope and tone from my Jurassic World duology. It will be less epic and more intimist, and will be more a thriller than a straight action-adventure story.

- In terms of length, I aim to have something similar to one of the JW diptych’s books.

- Every character from Fallen Kingdom are in this fic and following the example of my previous fic, a certain number of original characters will be added to the characters roster (see character list below).

- The publication of the French version will start in the second semester of 2022 and the publication of the English version in 2023 if everything goes well. Links for the French version of the different chapters will still be shared here for the most curious among you.

Characters

1. Main and secondary characters list

Original or semi-original characters that will be introduced in this instalment are in bold.

Dearing-Grady family:
- Claire Dearing, fallen park director of Jurassic World.
- Owen Grady, a zookeeper and former leader of InGen’s IBRIS program.
- Sigurd Dearing-Grady, Claire’s and Owen’s infant son.

World De-extinction Monitoring Center:
- Guillaume Vuillier, the agency’s new general director.
- Peggy Zubiri, assistant of Guillaume Vuillier.

Dinosaur Protection Group:
- Alexander Singer, founder and leader.
- Zia Rodriguez, veterinary.
- Franklin Webb, IT technician.

Lockwood Manor:
- Benjamin Lockwood, former CEO of InGen.
- Maisie Lockwood, granddaughter of Benjamin Lockwood.
- Elijah Mills, aide of Benjamin Lockwood and manager of the Lockwood foundation.
- Iris Carroll, housekeeper.

InGen:
Board of directors:
- Susan Lynton, the corporation’s new CEO and former vice president.
- Alistair Iger, director of public relations and the corporation’s spokesman.
- Dominick Silverman, chief financial officer.
Genetic Division:
- Professor Henry Wu, director of the division.
- Doctor Ivan Preston, Henry Wu’s right-hand man and boyfriend.
InGen Security:
- Edward Torres, director of the division.
- Valentine Taylor, a guard at the Farm.
The Farm:
- Jocelyn Hodgson, manager.

Wheatley’s mercenaries:
- Kenneth Wheatley, mercenary leader.
- Theo Lomas, one of Wheatley’s men.

Miscellaneous:
- Jeremy Rankin, a mercenary working for one of InGen’s rivals.
- Maya Harris, a former member of the US Navy Marine Mammal program and an old acquaintance of Owen Grady.
- Sophie de Mafart, an employee of the DGSE (France’s external intelligence service) and friend of Guillaume Vuillier.
- Rodrigue Santagar, an agent of the DIS (Directorate of Intelligence and Security), the intelligence service of the Costa Rican government.
- Jeff Rossiter, former CEO of Biosyn.
- Lord Francis Clayton, an English aristocrat and former sponsor of Jurassic World.
- Amelia Grendel, CEO of the Swiss corporation Grendel.
- Professor Ian Malcolm, mathematician-chaotician and survivor of the 1993 and 1997 incidents.
- Gunnar Eversol, auctioneer.
- Enrique Ordóñez, mayor of the Costa Rican town of Burgo Nuevo.

Michael Crichton’s fans and readers probably recognized the name of Jeff Rossiter as he was in The Lost World novel, and the name of Maya Harris was inspired by those of two characters from the so-beloved John Sayles’ script for Jurassic Park IV. The name Grendel also comes from that script. (You can throw me rotten tomatoes for daring to use elements from it. :p).

2. Hypothetical casting for original and semi-original characters

Just like many of the characters I created for the Jurassic World diptych, the physical appearance of the original and semi-original characters from the list above were based on real actors, who figures on the following chart:



Pictures Source: Wikipedia, Sens Critique, IMDb


Confirmed or planned species

— Achillobator giganticus (Blue)
— Acrocanthosaurus atokensis*
— Apatosaurus louisae
— Anzu wyliei
— Baurusuchus salgadoensis
— Carnotaurus sastrei
— Compsognathus longipes
— Corythosaurus casuarius
— Cryptoclidus eurymerus*
— Deinocheirus mirificus
— Dilophosaurus wetherilli*
— Dryosaurus altus
— Harpactognathus gentryii*
— «Indoraptor »
— Kunbarrasaurus ieversi
— Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis
— Metriacanthosaurus parkeri
— Mosasaurus hoffmanni*
— Mussaurus patagonicus
— Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis
— Parasaurolophus walkeri
— Pegomastax africanus
— Pelecanimimus polyodon
— Purgatorius unio
— Shantungosaurus giganteus
— Squalicorax falcatus*
— Stegosaurus stenops
— Titanites giganteus*
— Therizinosaurus cheloniformis
— Triceratops horridus
— Velociraptor mongoliensis
— Xiphactinus audax*

*Appears in the prologue (see next section)

Please note that this list could change and that some species could only makes cameos.

The prologue as a foretaste...

While most of the fic will only be published in two years, I already wrote and translated the prologue. Here's the links:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13791894/1/Scavengers-in-Troubled-Waters
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DCItSSsIYusjKaV_Qd9E41bLhhJgtW69/view?usp=sharing (PDF version)


I can't wait to know your thoughts about it!

I have the pleasure to share a first extract.



The context

Having arrived in Site D, InGen’s facility in the Ismaloya Mountains where the surviving animals of Jurassic World are being kept, Claire, Owen, Alexander, Zia and Franklin are touring the facility when they learn that two Velociraptor escaped from the kennels. While Owen and Juan, the chief keeper, go help capture the predators in a kitchen, Claire and the DPG trio are taken outside by Marisol, another keeper, to look through the windows and act as eyes for those in the kitchen. While Franklin is genuinely scared by the situation, his companions are oddly enough more relaxed.


The extract:

As Owen and Allison each walked down a different aisle, he in the one between the wall and the first row and she between the latter and the second row, Franklin frantically searched for the raptors, fearing to see them suddenly appear and pounce on the unarmed keepers to tear them to pieces. But apart from them, the kitchen seemed quite deserted and from what they saw, it didn't appear to be trashed and the only unprotected foods they saw were fruits and vegetables, uninteresting for the velociraptors, and the meat was stored in closed large refrigerators.

"We have the whole kitchen on sight, but I don't see any raptors," Franklin observed. “They’re young?”

"No, they’re adults," Marisol answered.

But as Juan made his way down the second aisle, the same one his colleague had entered, Franklin saw, out of the corner of his eye, an animal moving stealthily, finishing up the aisle in the opposite direction to that of the chief keeper and turn to disappear immediately behind the corner of a cabinet at the end of the third row. Invisible until then since it had advanced very close to the furniture of the second row, out of their field of vision, the animal had been too fast for the IT technician for him to see it clearly but he had noticed a bipedal silhouette, a small size of about two meters in length and fifty to sixty centimetres in height, and a body covered with feathers.

“Did you see something?” The keeper asked.

"There was… some kind of bird…" Franklin replied hesitantly.

“Describe this bird.”

“It had a long tail, a narrow head and a dark brown back.”

"It's Randy."

"Randy?"

"The male."

The male?

Turning his head sideways, Franklin noticed that his companions were looking at him with a somewhat amused air and he then realized that he had been bamboozled.

“Wait, it wasn't a Velociraptor. That thing was barely bigger than a turkey. You're kidding, aren't you? All this mess for clawed turkeys...”

Meanwhile, Marisol had just informed Juan about Randy’s location, using her headset’s microphone.

“Have some respect, young man!” Marisol told the IT technician.  “They can send you to the hospital if you don’t handle them properly.”

Claire then turned to him and said:

"Tell me, wouldn't you be one of those still stuck at the end of the last century or the early 2000s, when the neoraptors were called velociraptors?"

“Uh ...”

He grew ashamed of his confusion and saw Alexander smirking while Zia was giggling.

"You could have warned me," he whispered reproachfully. “I look like a huge dimwit now. Thanks guys!”

In a more audible voice, he added:

“It's also the fault of the people at the headquarters! When talking about man-eating raptors, they used the word Velociraptor, not Neoraptor.”

“We’re lucky that Wu classified them as a new taxon before Jurassic World’s opening,” Zia said, “because the previous reports as well as Spielberg's films had already caused quite a bit of confusion ...”