“Jurassic World: Rebirth” has hauled in a staggering $870M at the worldwide box office, and now comes word that Universal isn’t ready to let this dinosaur cash cow go extinct just yet.
Here’s The InSneider reporting that “Jurassic World Rebirth” director Gareth Edwards is in final negotiations to return to the franchise and direct its next installment for Universal. The follow-up would once again center around Scarlett Johansson’s covert ops expert, Zoe Bennett. Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali are also expected to return for the sequel. No word yet on who will write the script, but it could very well be ‘Rebirth’ scribe David Koepp.
Plot-wise, ‘Rebirth’ picked up five years after Dominion. Dinosaurs now exist in scattered pockets across the globe, and humanity believes it has things under control. Johansson’s Bennett leads a mission to extract DNA samples from the three largest creatures across land, sea, and air — genetic material rumored to hold the key to revolutionary medical breakthroughs. Things, naturally, go off the rails.
Last year, Edwards (”The Creator” and “Rogue One”) took over directing duties after original Rebirth helmer David Leitch dropped out of the project due to “creative differences.”
I thought Edwards would be a great replacement. Given his background in both sci-fi and monster movies, he, more so than Leitch, was a genuinely better match for the Jurassic World franchise, I wrote. Sadly, after watching ‘Rebirth,’ I came away disappointed. It was terrible.
Of course, Koepp’s clumsy script was partly to blame — flat writing, a tired plot that felt stitched together from leftover scraps of past sequels. Edwards’ visuals were too over the top.
This left me thinking: it’s been 32 years since “Jurassic Park” came out, and frankly, that’s still the only worthy film in the series. Yes, ‘The Lost World’ wasn’t well-received when it came out, but compared to the nonsense we’ve been getting since, its stock has quietly risen. At least Spielberg was still behind the camera, and there were some interesting ideas — even if the execution was messy. It was also the darkest chapter of the franchise.
Every sequel since has been chasing the original’s magic without understanding what made it work — wonder, tension, and restraint. Instead, we keep getting bigger dinosaurs, louder set pieces, and thinner characters. It’s been a creatively bankrupt series for decades.