Just a few weeks after I scoffed at Jurassic Park star Sam Neill calling the franchise “done” (seriously, what the hell does he know?), the Hollywood Reporter is saying director/producer Steven Spielberg has been meeting with screenwriter Mark Protosevich to kick around ideas for how to reboot the lucrative dino-tale. (They can’t get it off the ground just by using the the moniker “3-D”?)

Both Universal, which released the trilogy, and Spielberg’s camp stress that no one has been engaged to write a script and that the discussions have been purely exploratory. But the idea is kind of a no-brainer.

The franchise, born of the late Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, has been in stuck in amber since 2001, when Joe Johnston directed Jurassic Park III from a script by Peter Buchman, Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne. That last entry signaled the series’ fading fortunes, as it grossed just $369 million worldwide — Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park grossed $915 million and $619 million, respectively.

Several years ago, Spielberg worked with Protosevich on a potential remake of Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy that was to star Will Smith.

