The latest entry in the Jurassic Park / Jurassic World franchise, Jurassic World Rebirth, just reached theatres yesterday (you can read our review at THIS LINK and let us know what you thought of the movie HERE), but even before the movie was released, rumors were already swirling that Universal Pictures is hoping to get director Gareth Edwards and star Scarlett Johansson to come back for a sequel. Maybe those conversations will officially begin once the weekend box office numbers are in, but during an interview with Screen Rant, Edwards said that he hasn’t talked to anyone about a sequel. Yet.
News of the new Jurassic World movie first hit back in January of 2024, when it was revealed that the screenplay had already been written by original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp, returning to the franchise for the first time since The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The project was assembled in a mad scramble after that, with Godzilla and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards ending up at the helm. This new Jurassic World movie won’t be featuring any returning lead characters from the previous Jurassic Park / Jurassic World movies, so describing it as a “Rebirth” could be accurate. The characters played by Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern are out, as are the ones played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
The new characters are played by the likes of Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton), Mahershala Ali (Green Book), Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer) – all of whom had their roles directly offered to them. Luna Blaise (Manifest), on the other hand, had to (according to Deadline) “beat out a number of actors” to land her role. David Iacono of The Summer I Turned Pretty, child actress Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Ed Skrein (Deadpool), and Béchir Sylvain (Diarra from Detroit) are also in the cast… along with a bunch of hungry dinosaurs.
Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) was also offered a role, but he turned it down because he felt his presence in the movie wouldn’t help it. He did say that the script is great, though.
Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley produced the film for Kennedy/Marshall. Steven Spielberg executive produced through Amblin Entertainment. Universal’s executive vp of production development Sara Scott and creative executive Jacqueline Garell oversaw the project for the studio.
Here’s what we were told about the plot: Jurassic World Rebirth sees an intrepid team racing to secure DNA samples from the three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air. Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. 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. Johansson’s character is Zora Bennett, “a skilled covert operations expert contracted to lead a 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.” Bailey is playing paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis, with Ali as Zora’s most trusted team leader, Duncan Kincaid.
When the subject of a sequel was brought up, Edwards told Screen Rant, “Maybe there’s something in there. But no, we tried to make this movie like a single standalone. When I look back on sequels, trilogies that I love, what they all have in common is that the first movie was on its own, and then it became a high-class problem of how do we now make the others? I’ve genuinely never talked about it with anybody. Not a single conversation with David Koepp or Frank Marshall or Universal about a sequel. I think everyone’s like (knocks on wood), all they want is for people to really like this movie and make the best film we can, and that’s it. And then it’s in the lap of the gods, everything else, really.“
Would you like to see Gareth Edwards return to the helm for a Jurassic World Rebirth sequel? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
