'Jurassic Park's Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum back for 'Jurassic World 3'

Forget the velociraptors, the indominus rexes and the pterosaurs - the academics are back, and they mean business.

Dr Ellie Sattler, Dr Alan Grant and Dr Ian Malcolm will all be returning for Jurassic World 3.

While Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm pitched up for the last movie, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it's the first time that Sam Neill's Grant and Dern's Ellie Sattler have appeared in the Jurassic franchise since 2001's Jurassic Park III.

Dern revealed the news in a special appearance at a fan screening of the new Jurassic World short Battle At Big Rock, according to Deadline. The new was then confirmed on the official Jurassic World social media accounts which shared an image of the trio with the caption “they’re back”.

All three first appeared in Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster, butting heads with the late Richard Attenborough's millionaire industrialist John Hammond, who created the first, ill-feted dino park.

Read more: What Battle At Big Rock might tell us about Jurassic World 3

Since then, the movie series has grossed over $5 billion, with Colin Trevorrow rebooting the series with Jurassic World in 2015.

Trevorrow somehow managed to film Battle At Big Rock in secret, unveiling it to fans last week.

The eight-minute short (you can watch it here) will act as a bridge between Fallen Kingdom and the so far un-suffixed Jurassic Park 3, which Trevorrow is also co-writing and directing.

It finds a family bearing witness to the first dinosaurs now loose on American soil following the catastrophic events of Fallen Kingdom.

Read more: Jurassic Park writer reveals most quoted line

Joining Neill, Dern and Goldblum will be Chris Pratt reprising his role as dino-wrangler Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard as former Jurassic World ops manager turned dino-rights campaigner Claire Dearing.

The plot is being kept under wraps – though dinosaurs loose in the US will surely be the main crux – but production begins early next year.

Jurassic World 3 is due for release on June 11, 2021.