Universal threw a decent amount of money at Jurassic World, but at $150M you can tell they were playing it a bit cautious. And for good reason; the franchise had been dormant for years and revivals of nostalgia films hadn't proved consistently successful. But then it went on to make over $1.6B worldwide and that may have given them confidence to up the ante significantly for the upcoming sequel.
There's some conflict surrounding this news so just keep that in mind. According to El Pais, Jurassic World 2 director J.A. Bayona said that the film's budget would be $260M, nearly double its predecessor. But why bother? Seriously? If you could make over a billion dollars and spend considerably less, why go this route? I understand studio logic, "Spend more money make more money" but as we've seen more often than not this rarely proves to be the case. Obviously audiences loved dinosaurs almost as much as they loved Chris Pratt but how far does that extend?
Meanwhile, Slashfilm has a source that says Bayona did NOT reveal the budget and that something might have been lost in the Spanish-language translation. Furthermore they say that production hasn't progressed far enough to calculate a final budget so Bayona couldn't have even if he wanted to. Who's right? Ultimately, most people aren't going to care and none of it will matter until the movie is already in theaters and numbers start adding up. And that won't be until July 22nd 2018 when Jurassic World 2 opens.
