Jurassic World: Rebirth is still months away, but director Gareth Edwards has big plans for the future of the franchise. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly published on Wednesday, Edwards said that he hopes the movie’s title will hold true, promising a “back-to-basics” approach to the Jurassic Park franchise. He was extremely open about his hope that this would lead to a new trilogy of dinosaur movies.
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“I can’t speak for Universal, but it did feel like a new trilogy, in a way,” he said. “I’m not sure what their plans are, but it felt like the beginning of a brand-new chapter in this franchise.” Rebirth is currently scheduled to hit theaters on July 2, 2025. Edwards is looking back as well as forward, explaining that he believes this movie will succeed by evoking the franchise’s first director.
“To me, it’s a giant love letter to Steven Spielberg and his earlier films,” he said. “There are moments in this movie that remind me very much of Jaws. It’s like little greatest hits of all those aspects of his films that I loved growing up as a child. It’s essentially a little adventure odyssey across this island, a survival story, really.”
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Rebirth kicks off five years after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, and finds the escaped dinosaur clones struggling to survive in the earth’s current climate. The most hospitable place they’ve settled is an equatorial island chain, which is where the story takes place. Scientists believe that the DNA of three specific dinosaurs could lead to a pharmaceutical breakthrough, but they’ll need a team of fearless adventurers to go in and get it.
That team includes covert ops veteran Zora Bennet (Scarlett Johansson), leader Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). A pharmaceutical rep named Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) tags along on behalf of the company, and the team unexpectedly encounters shipwreck survivors along the way as well.
Rebirth has a lot to live up to as the next installment in one of the most beloved blockbuster franchises of all time. On the other hand, it needs to win back lost ground from the previous trilogy. Jurassic World: Dominion made about half as much money as Jurassic World did, and the critical response to each installment trended downward. Edwards seems undaunted by this, believing wholeheartedly in the potential of this franchise above all else.
“Jurassic Park did lead the way with computer graphics, but I feel like we got lost along the way with the arms race to a spectacle,” he said. “Jurassic actually only had just a few dozen VFX shots in it, and it’s such a powerful film. So, it was trying to go back to all those tricks and ideas that tease the audience, that creates suspense and tension that get you on the edge of your seat. I just wanted to create that feeling I had when I was young of being in awe of these things.”
