Welcome back to Jurassic Park. 32 years after Jurassic Park — and three years after the series seemingly went extinct with 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion — screenwriter David Koepp is reviving the Universal franchise as Jurassic World Rebirth, with the DNA of the Steven Spielberg-directed original.
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Koepp, who scripted 1993’s Jurassic Park with author Michael Crichton and 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, revealed that the upcoming fourth Jurassic World movie (and seventh Jurassic movie overall) will be closer in spirit to the first installment than the recent trilogy that starred Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
“I hope people like the movie because the series tended to change after [Jurassic Park III], and it felt like, ‘Okay, so let’s change our tone.’ Steven [Spielberg] and I were interested in a tone that was maybe more akin to the very first movie,” Koepp said on The Discourse Podcast. “I saw it early on as a mission movie. I like things that are driven by bottles, by containment.”
That mission sees an intrepid team racing to secure DNA samples from the three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air.
“Developing a limited team and a thing that they have to accomplish – that was all really fun,” Koepp added. “And it was just fun to return to that world of great adventure backed by real science and write some cool new characters. You don’t often get a chance to have a blank slate and say, ‘What do you want to do?’ There were no franchise expectations other than dinosaurs.”
Koepp even compiled a list of “nine commandments” for the new Jurassic movie, “a list of things that we had to abide by.”
“One was [that] the events of the previous six movies cannot be contradicted or denied, because I don’t like a retcon,” Koepp revealed. “Those are no fun. Two, humor is oxygen. Science must be real. You know, all the things that we wanted our movie to be. And I just had a great fun doing it with Steven and then with [director] Gareth [Edwards].”
Edwards, whose credits include Monsters, 2014’s Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The Creator, is directing the new movie that counts Indiana Jones and Jurassic World series producer Frank Marshall and Spielberg as producers. Patrick Crowley, a producer of the Jurassic World trilogy, is also on board the movie that will launch a “new Jurassic era.”
Five years after the events of Dominion, which saw dinosaurs roaming the Earth, “The planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs,” per the synopsis. “Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures within that tropical biosphere hold the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.”
Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers) plays skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett, contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure genetic material from the world’s three most massive dinosaurs. When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on an island where they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that’s been hidden from the world for decades.
Two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali (Blade) is Zora’s most trusted team leader, Duncan Kincaid; Jonathan Bailey (Wicked) is paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis; Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi) is Martin Krebs, a rep for Big Pharma; and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer) is Reuben Delgado, the father of the shipwrecked civilian family.
The cast includes Luna Blaise (Manifest), David Iacono (The Summer I Turned Pretty) and Audrina Miranda (Lopez vs. Lopez) as Reuben’s family, with Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Bechir Sylvain (BMF) and Ed Skrein (Deadpool) as members of Zora and Krebs’ respective crews.
Universal Pictures has scheduled Jurassic World Rebirth to open in theaters July 2nd, 2025.