Jeff Goldblum is returning to the Jurassic Park franchise and will reprise his role of Dr. Ian Malcolm in the follow-up to Jurassic World.

Goldblum starred in both Jurassic Park and The Lost World, having taken on a larger role in the sequel. He was nowhere to be seen in the third film, Jurassic Park III, which saw the return of Sam Neill and Laura Dern in their roles as paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler, respectively.

For fans of the series, such as myself, it’s exciting to see the return of Goldblum. Goldblum joins returning stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in the film. Justice Smith, James Cromwell and Toby Jones are also cast for the sequel. A Monster Calls director J. A. Bayona takes over for Colin Trevorrow in the director’s chair. Trevorrow co-wrote the screenplay with Derek Connolly. Trevorrow is not returning to direct, presumably because of directing Star Wars: Episode 9, due out on May 23, 2019.

Trevorrow has said that the series will not be limited to dinosaurs chasing humans like in the previous films. In many ways, it’s inspired by the past according to a quote from Trevorrow in an interview with Jurassic Cast (via Coming Soon).

“The second one, Jurassic World 2, and as we were driving we tried to find, what is the foundation? ‘Dinosaurs and man, separated by 65 million years of evolution have been thrown back into the mix together. How can we know what to expect?’ That’s why it’s exciting that the movie did well, that leaves us a lot of room to run, and it was part of this design, it had a beginning, middle, and end when we wrote the first movie. Now that the movie did well, we get to play that out.”

Trevorrow has previously said that the sequel will explore open-source breeding.

Universal Pictures will distribute Jurassic World 2 in theaters on June 7, 2018 in the United Kingdom and June 22, 2018 in the United States.

The Hollywood Reporter was the first to report the news.