Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) might have brought audiences back to the franchise’s familiar jungle island setting, but its creative choices sparked backlash from longtime fans.
Despite grossing $869.1 million globally, the seventh entry faced plenty of criticism from viewers and critics for erasing the global dinosaur presence established in Fallen Kingdom (2018) and expanded in Dominion (2018) by explaining that “the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs,” adding, “those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived.”
Screenwriter David Koepp, who co-wrote the original films, Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World (1997), explained the decision in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last year, admitting that he had no idea how to follow the previous two films.
“I didn’t have a single idea about where to go”, he said, adding that he wanted to make dinosaurs “special again” by returning them to environments closer to their prehistoric origins.
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Jurassic World Rebirth follows Scarlett Johansson’s covert ops expert Zora Bennett as she attempts to recover experimental genetic material from three massive dinosaurs on Ile Saint-Hubert. Predictably, things go wrong, and the jungle’s inhabitants prove lethal.
While Rebirth offers a classic adventure setup, the choice to drastically reduce dinosaur populations on a global scale deeply frustrated viewers invested in the franchise’s continuity and its tie-in media, including games and the animated series Chaos Theory.
Universal Pictures has yet to officially greenlit a sequel, but reports suggest talks are underway with director Gareth Edwards and the main cast in negotiations to return.
Those discussions raise the possibility of a course correction. And now, Edwards has expressed interest in seeing dinosaurs on the mainland. Speaking to Wholetusoutmovies (via Swrve), he revealed that his favorite scene in the entire Jurassic Park franchise is when the T. rex attacks San Diego in the 1997 sequel, The Lost World.
“I like it when they get to the gas station,” he said. “I also like it when it [the rex] gets to the house and it drinks from the pool. I just wanted two hours of that.”
He then added “Maybe one day we’ll get two hours of that,” suggesting he’d like to see a full movie where dinosaurs are on the mainland, a storyline already established in previous films but disposed of in Rebirth. Watch the clip below (via Swrve):
If a follow-up gets the green light, the next chapter could undo Rebirth’s reset in the same way that film retconned Fallen Kingdom and Dominion. Here’s hoping.
Jurassic World Rebirth stars Scarlett Johansson (Avengers: Endgame), Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer), Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Mahershala Ali (The Green Book), Luna Blaise (Manifest), David Iacono (Dead Boy Detectives), Audrina Miranda (Lopez vs Lopez), Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Bechir Sylvain (BMF), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool).
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