Jurassic World Rebirth Will Feature Previously Unadapted Scene from Michael Crichton's Novel
Jurassic World Rebirth stomps into theaters everywhere Wednesday, July 2.
More than three decades in, the Jurassic Park/World film franchise continues to draw on specific story elements from Michael Crichton's 1990 novel that kickstarted our fascination with a theme park overrun by genetically engineered dinosaurs.
In a recent interview with Variety, longtime Hollywood scribe and Steven Spielberg collaborator David Koepp teased the upcoming Jurassic World Rebirth movie (scheduled to hit the big screen this July via Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment), which will apparently feature a previously unadapted sequence from the bestselling source material.
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Jurassic World Rebirth writer David Koepp teases new dinosaur blockbuster
"I reread the two novels to get myself back in that mode," said Koepp, who famously wrote the screenplays for 1993's Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. "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 process of grafting scenes from the first novel onto subsequent films is, of course, nothing new to the beloved series. The T. rex attack at the waterfall in Lost World and the Pterosaur "birdcage" sequence in Jurassic Park III are both great examples of returning to the dino-well. For the time being, we can only guess what Koepp repurposed for Rebirth, though fans did have plenty of theories before producer Frank Marshall spilled the beans in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. As many Jurassic acolytes suspected, however, it's the scene where Alan Grant and the two Murphy children are pursued by a T. rex while floating along a lagoon in a rubber raft. The very scene, we might add, that inspired Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios.
What we do know for certain, however, is that Rebirth was directed by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) and takes place five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion. Unable to survive in the unfamiliar environment of a 21st century Earth, the menagerie of escaped dinosaurs from Lockwood Manor have begun to die off. Only a small collection of creatures remain alive and well in and around a tropical island that, according to Vanity Fair, once served as InGen's original research lab. Like the creatures of Skull Island, the OG batch of cloned abominations not only survived the passage of time, but have also grown to monstrous sizes. Well, more monstrous than usual.
Most folks are happy to leave them be, but human greed is one hell of a drug. And speaking of powerful drugs, the plot centers around a group of mercenaries (led by Scarlett Johansson's Zora Bennett) looking to collect priceless DNA samples from the largest lizards across land, sea, and air on behalf of a pharmaceutical company looking to develop a miracle panacea for humankind.
"The first two movies were two of my favorite experiences ever," Koepp told Variety. "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."
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Mahershala Ali (Green Book), Jonathan Bailey (Wicked), Rupert Friend (Asteroid City), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer), Luna Blaise (Manifest), David Iacono (The Summer I Turned Pretty), Audrina Miranda (Lopez vs. Lopez), Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Bechir Sylvain (BMF), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool) co-star.
When does Jurassic World Rebirth open in theaters?
Jurassic World Rebirth stomps into theaters everywhere Wednesday, July 2 — just in time for the long Independence Day weekend. Tickets are not yet on sale.