Sam Neill updates on coronavirus-postponed 'Jurassic World: Dominion'

Sam Neill will be reprising his role of grumpy palaeontologist Alan Grant in Jurassic World: Dominion. But not for a while yet.

Filming of the latest movie in the long-running dinosaur franchise, being helmed by Colin Trevorrow, had to be halted just two weeks into production, following the coronavirus lockdown.

Speaking on the Fitzy & Wippa show on NovaFM in Australia, he explained that the cast are now 'in the fridge'.

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“They got two weeks done,” he said. “I was waiting in London for my stuff to start and then it became apparent it was going to close down in a day or two.

“I got a flight to Perth, made it as far as Sydney and got into the quarantine thing.”

He went on: “We'll start as soon as we can. We're supposed to be in London but it's a complete mess at the moment. I'd like to think that maybe we could start or restart in this part of the world and then finish off in the studio.

“We're using the Bond stage [at Pinewood] to build these enormous sets in London. They'd like to use those, ideally, but if nothing is happening there, I don't know when we can get started.”

Filming had started on the movie in February, in Vancouver, with other locations in Malta, Hawaii and Hawley Common in Hampshire.

But the film was put on a hiatus on 13 March, 10 days prior to the UK's full lockdown.

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There's no news yet on when production might restart, but currently the movie still has its release date of 11 June, 2021, in place.

Neill will be back on screen alongside Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Satler, and Jeff Goldblum as smooth-talking maths whizz Dr. Ian Malcolm.

They'll join Chris Pratt, Bryce Dalla Howard, Jake Johnson and Omar Sy on the bill.