‘Jurassic Park’ Films In Trouble After ‘Rebirth’, Key Creative Issues Bleak Update

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) was a huge commercial hit for the Jurassic Park franchise, grossing $869.1 million worldwide. Critically, however, it proved far more divisive among fans.

How Jurassic World Rebirth Ruined the Series

Directed by Gareth Edwards, with a screenplay by David Koepp, Rebirth takes place five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion (2022) — which ended with dinosaurs thriving around the world peacefully — to find that “the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable” to the genetically engineered prehistoric creatures, and that “those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived.”

But this major retcon instantly proved divisive. And last year, Koepp only made things worse.

The writer, who also worked on the scripts for Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), admitted to The Hollywood Reporter last year that he “didn’t have a single idea about where to go” with that storyline after Dominion. “Let’s make dinosaurs exotic and special so that we have to go seek them out instead of, you know, fighting with them over a cab,” he told the outlet. In other words, he wanted to take the Jurassic series back to another island.

Related: ‘Jurassic Park’ Launches Brand-New Continuity After ‘Rebirth’ Ruins Film Series

The plot, set against the backdrop of that extinction-level event, sees Scarlett Johansson’s covert ops expert Zora Bennett lead a specialist team to a third island that InGen abandoned years ago, this one named Ile Saint-Hubert, which is home to genetically mutated abominations.

What this has to do with the dinosaurs living around the planet is unclear — Koepp could still have set the film on this island and kept all the other populations alive. The fact that dinosaurs can survive near the equator is irrelevant as the ones on Ile Saint-Hubert have always been there.

Fans were quick to lambast Koepp and his screenplay for undoing seven years of storytelling, which started at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) when dinosaurs were unleashed into the North American wilderness and across the globe.

That same concept has carried over into other media, including the animated series Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, the live-action short Battle at Big Rock, the mobile app Jurassic World: Alive, and the video game sequels Jurassic World Evolution 2 and 3. Dominion, the sixth film in the series, also expanded on the idea. In short, it’s a rich premise that fans have fully embraced.

Koepp Admits He Doesn’t Know How to Continue Jurassic

Sadly, it’s been completely undone because David Koepp didn’t know how to follow it up. And now, to make things worse, he’s admitted something similar regarding the next Jurassic film, which is reportedly in early development — even though he more or less says there’s no script yet.

In an interview with Screen Rant, the screenwriter has said he’s unsure how to continue the Jurassic film series in “a logically and in a scientifically believable way” (why realism is important to someone who wrote mutant dinosaurs into the last film is beyond anyone’s guess).

Related: ‘Jurassic Park’ Officially Hitting Reset After ‘Rebirth’ Ruins Film Series

“You can’t say trilogy. You got to make one good movie. So now what about another good movie? How would we do that?” Koepp said.

He continued: “I think that the challenge of Rebirth was the franchises have become very big, very spread out. Let’s make the dinosaurs special again by restricting them. So we restricted them to this thing, and then the challenge becomes, okay, now how do we logically and in a scientifically believable way expand? That would be the question. If somebody can answer that, I think you’ll have a next movie.”

Rebirth might have never positioned as the start of a new Jurassic trilogy, with the likes of Edwards and Johansson describing the film as “standalone” prior to its theatrical release; however, the film was officially marketed as the start of “a new Jurassic era.” But with such a bare-bones screenplay, it’s really no surprise that there are no solid plans for a sequel of any kind.

Earlier this year, reports claimed that the film was aiming for a 2028 release, with production expected to start this year. But based on Koepp’s comments, that’s very unlikely to be the case. Also, Universal hasn’t confirmed anything. It’s possible Jurassic won’t return to the screen for some time, which has happened before. After Jurassic Park III was released in 2001, the series went dormant for 14 years until it was relaunched and rebranded with Jurassic World (2015).

Jurassic World Rebirth Follow-up Arrives

The only follow-up we’ve had to the 2025 film is the brand-new Jurassic World Rebirth Expansion for the park management simulation video game sequel Jurassic World Evolution 3 (2025). The new DLC serves as an official prequel to the film, as Evolution 3 is considered canon.

The expansion, which launched on June 16, offers explanations that weren’t given in the film itself. For instance, players learn about the third InGen island Île Saint-Hubert, its facility, mutated dinosaurs like the Distortus rex, and the mysterious, ancient Mayan ruins that are seen scattered throughout the jungle in the film, but are given no explanation or context on screen.

As such, it feels like the expansion has been designed with the film’s many glaring problems in mind. Perhaps while Frontier Developments is busy paving over its many cracks, Universal should consider a dramatic pivot away from the story established in the latest sequel altogether.

The Rebirth Expansion is now available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

There’s no release date for the next Jurassic World film.

What are your thoughts on Jurassic World Rebirth? Share your thoughts in the comments below!