Another Jurassic film seemed unlikely before Jurassic World Dominion actually hit theaters in June 2022; it was the third film in the Jurassic World series, following the three in the Jurassic Park series, and felt like an expected stopping point. But Dominion was… not good (io9’s review called it “colossally terrible“). Now, the (mostly) beloved dinosaur franchise is getting another chance with this summer’s Jurassic World Rebirth, directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One, The Creator), and written by original Jurassic Park adapter David Koepp.
In a new interview with Variety, Koepp—who penned Steven Soderbergh’s haunted-house drama Presence, which just hit theaters—spoke about his return to the Jurassic series after writing 1993’s Jurassic Park and 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, both for director Steven Spielberg.
“The first two movies were two of my favorite experiences ever,” the busy screenwriter remembered. “And Steven [Spielberg] said, ‘What about starting over? Let’s try something all new.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s a cool idea’ … and then I threw an idea back. That’s it. It caught. You do that all the time with your friends and collaborators: throw ideas back and forth. And sometimes they catch, usually they don’t. There is pressure because it’s going to cost a lot of money and there are going to be big expectations and blah, blah, blah. But there was no pressure at first— just the pursuit of our ideas.”
Though Jurassic World Rebirth is based on an original idea this time, Koepp did go back to his original source material—Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and The Lost World novels—for inspiration. “I reread the two novels to get myself back in that mode … we did take some things from them,” he said. “There was a sequence from the first novel that we’d always wanted in the original movie, but didn’t have room for. We were like, ‘Hey, we get to use that now.’ But just to get back in that head space 30 years later—is it still fun? And the answer is yes, it still really is. Dinosaurs are still fun.”
Jurassic World Rebirth stars Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, and presumably dinos galore; it picks up five years after the events of Dominion, and hits theaters July 2.
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