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Life continues to find a way for the Jurassic World franchise. Anyone who thought the dinosaur film saga started back in 1993 with Jurassic Park and bookended with Jurassic World: Dominion in 2022, with four sequels sandwiched in between, was finally complete is sadly mistaken.
Universal is in the process of rebooting the franchise yet again with another Jurassic World film, although the search is still on for a director to helm the project — with Deadline announcing Friday that the previously presumed director David Leitch has bowed out of contracts talks due to a different creative vision for the movie than Universal.
Deadline further revealed that “the new movie will be a completely fresh take on a Jurassic era with Jurassic World castmembers Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard not expected to return. Nor will the original trilogy’s thespians Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill.”
Jurassic World: Dominion provided some nice closure for fan-favorite characters like Dr. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, and a little redemption for head park scientist Dr. Henry Wu — so it's no surprise these characters won't be a part of the new film.
And since the world was still overrun by dinosaurs at the end of Jurassic World: Dominion, with the general consensus being that humans would just have to learn to coexist with the predators after unleashing this mess due to scientific experimentation and a general disregard for the natural order of things in the first place (Covid metaphor, anyone?) — it stands to reason there are other dinosaur/human interaction stories to tell.
Plus as long as kids still like playing with dinosaur toys, Universal is probably right to keep cranking out Jurassic films, as derivative as they may be.
The studio returned to the franchise's original screenwriter, David Koepp, for the latest installment — though he doesn't have the benefit of a Michael Crichton novel to draw from as source material this time, so it will be interesting to see what he comes up with.
Regardless, a new Jurassic World film should be a big draw for audiences, with David Leitch or any number of other major directors at the helm — with the six Jurassic films released thus far grossing over $6 billion worldwide. It doesn't take a chaos theory mathematics expert to understand that those numbers are bonkers.
