Month: January 2025

Since Jurassic World Rebirth‘s announcement just over a year ago, those following the production have awaited insights from its writer and Jurassic legend David Koepp – and lately we have gotten just that. Koepp recently shared his 9 Jurassic Commandments, and has also been on the press circuit for his new work with Steven Soderbergh. This week he joined Variety to discuss Presence (his latest Soderbergh collaboration) and provided even more Rebirth teases during the conversation.

You can read the full conversation here.

From Variety:

Koepp has proven himself to be one of Hollywood’s preeminent screenwriters since Steven Spielberg recruited him to pen “Jurassic Park” in his twenties. But between spectacle features, he has often returned to more contained settings, as with David Fincher’s home invasion thriller “Panic Room” or Soderbergh’s own tech-skeptic “Kimi,” released three years ago. But “Presence” put Koepp in a darker place than usual.

These movies don’t unfold in confined settings, but do you find a similar thrill in restrictions when you’re writing for an established property, like “Jurassic” or “Indiana Jones”?

Those are harder because of the lack of restrictions. The first “Jurassic” was at the dawn of CG. I asked Steven [Spielberg], “Well, what are my limitations here?” And he said, “Only your imagination.” I was like, “Okay, well, that’s a little hostile.” But we were making up whatever we felt like, then he was seeing if we could figure it out. Those are giant movies, so there’s a lot of expectations and there’s a lot of money. The level of tension and anxiety surrounding it is a lot higher. On this one, by virtue of the fact that its budget was a lot smaller and Steven was paying for it himself, there were whole levels of approval that just weren’t present.

You’ve returned to the “Jurassic” franchise to write “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which releases this summer. What was the impetus behind that homecoming?

The first two movies were two of my favorite experiences ever. And Steven said, “What about starting over? Let’s try something all new.” I said, “Oh, that’s a cool idea. What if blah, blah, blah,” and then I threw an idea back. That’s it. It caught. You do that all the time with your friends and collaborators: throw ideas back and forth. And sometimes they catch, usually they don’t. There is pressure because it’s going to cost a lot of money and there are going to be big expectations and blah, blah, blah. But there was no pressure at first — just the pursuit of our ideas.

There isn’t even a source novel you’re pulling from for this one, right?

No. I reread the two novels to get myself back in that mode though. We did take some things from them. There was a sequence from the first novel that we’d always wanted in the original movie, but didn’t have room for. We were like, “Hey, we get to use that now.” But just to get back in that head space 30 years later — is it still fun? And the answer is yes, it still really is. Dinosaurs are still fun.

The excitement continues to mount for Jurassic World Rebirth, thanks in no small part to David Koepp’s enthusiasm and passion. Great to hear about the blank slate he and Spielberg approached Rebirth with, and even better to hear they are adapting a sequence from Michael Crichton‘s original Jurassic Park novel! What do you think that sequence could be? There is so much material left to pull from in Crichton’s Jurassic works, which Koepp reread to prepare for his return to writing for the franchise. He’s just like us.

Koepp also spoke with SlashFilm to discuss Presence and writing a brand new Jurassic story for Rebirth.

From /Film:

For screenwriter David Koepp, 2025 might be best remembered as the year where he reunited with two guys named Steven. He’s currently on the press circuit promoting his script for Steven Soderbergh’s unconventional ghost story “Presence” after having worked with the director previously on 2022’s pandemic-era thriller “Kimi,” and this summer, audiences will see the fruits of Koepp’s reunion with another Steven — Mr. Spielberg, who is executive producing “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which just missed a slot on /Film’s Most Anticipated Movies of 2025 list.

See, Spielberg asked Koepp, who wrote the first two “Jurassic Park” movies back in the 1990s, if he was interested in taking a shot at cooking up a new direction for the “Jurassic” franchise in the aftermath of “Jurassic World Dominion,” a movie that made over a billion dollars but which was not beloved by critics or general audiences. With that question posed, Koepp made an observation about the franchise as a whole:

“When Steven [Spielberg] said, ‘Hey, do you want to try to come up with a new one?’, it had seemed to me that the tone and characters of the movies changed every three movies. So after the first three, it changed into ‘Jurassic World,’ which was a different tone and wholly different characters, and then that came, it seemed, to a logical conclusion. So [‘Jurassic World Rebirth’] seemed like a chance to say, ‘OK, what now?'”

According to the official synopsis from Universal, this new film takes the “Jurassic” movies “in an ingenious new direction.”

“We didn’t want to deny any events that occurred,” Koepp told me. “[The new film is set] in that world. But how might that world have changed in the last five years, and whose story is this now? So it was a chance to start over, and still play in this incredibly fun sandbox with the enthusiasm of a big studio behind you. It was the best of all possible worlds. And Steven and I got to do the absolute most fun part of filmmaking, which is, ‘Hey, what if…’ and then you just make up stuff.”

Some of the “stuff” they made up: In the five years since the events of “Dominion,” dinosaurs have learned that they can essentially only live in climates similar to the ones they operated in previously. The three biggest dinos on the planet “hold the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind,” and it’s up to skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to snag the genetic material that can make that dream a reality. Mahershala Ali is on board as a team leader, there’s a stranded family that gets roped into the action, and the synopsis also teases “a sinister, shocking discovery that’s been hidden from the world for decades.” Color us intrigued.

Steven Spielberg and David Koepp “trying to come up with a new one” has to be music to Jurassic fans’ ears. His words about changing the tone and characters every three movies while not denying any events that have occurred bode well for what’s to come in his Rebirth story and the franchise as a whole. We can’t wait to see what Koepp and Spielberg have come up with for the seventh Jurassic Park film!

What do you think about what Koepp had to say in these interviews? What Jurassic Park novel sequence would you like to see in Jurassic World Rebirth? Let us know in the comments, and watch our full breakdown below.