Several major outlets—Entertainment Weekly, ScreenRant, and Empire—have rolled out fresh stills from Universal’s upcoming dino spectacle Jurassic World: Rebirth. The images center on franchise newcomer Scarlett Johansson, who plays covert-operations specialist Zora Bennett. One photo captures Zora ducking behind a toppled cargo container while sparks rain down, her tactical gear streaked with mud. Another shows her sprinting across what appears to be an abandoned raptor enclosure, clutching a flare that splashes crimson light on rusted safety rails. In each frame, Johansson wears an expression somewhere between “I’ve got a plan” and “how is this happening again?”—suggesting that, while Zora’s résumé says CIA black-ops veteran, her survival skills are about to be pushed into uncharted territory.
Curiously, the new batch offers only fleeting hints of the franchise’s real stars: the dinosaurs. A blurred tail in the background of one shot hints at a familiar Tyrannosaurus rex, while another image contains a menacing claw silhouette just out of focus. Insiders claim Universal is deliberately withholding full reveals of the Distortus rex—the rumored apex predator bred from T-rex, Rancor, and Xenomorph DNA—and other “mutant strata” species roaming Isla Nublar’s overgrown ravines. Marketing executives want the Fourth-of-July audience to encounter these horrors in real time, a strategy reminiscent of the original 1993 film’s teaser campaign that kept the T-rex mostly hidden until release week.
Industry watchers believe the studio is timing its next marketing surge to coincide with DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon live-action release in June, creating a one-two punch of creature features. Trailer rating boards have already logged a new two-and-a-half-minute Jurassic World: Rebirth spot, virtually guaranteeing internet debut before month’s end. Expect it to land alongside IMAX pre-shows and premium-screen countdowns during late-June tentpoles, setting up what Universal is branding as “Jurassic June.”
Directed by Rogue One helmer Gareth Edwards, Rebirth reportedly blends practical animatronics with next-gen CG—ILM used LED volume stages to project volcanic skylines onto actors, ensuring real reflections of lava flows in visor shields. Veterans Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are absent this round, making room for an ensemble led by Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and breakout star Jonathan Bailey. If the newly released stills are any indication, the humans will be too busy outrunning bio-engineered nightmares to miss the old guard.
The cast features Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation; Marriage Story; Black Widow), Mahershala Ali (Moonlight; Green Book; True Detective), Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton; Fellow Travelers; Crashing), Rupert Friend (Homeland; Anatomy of a Scandal; Asteroid City), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer; The Magnificent Seven; 6 Underground), Luna Blaise (Manifest; Fresh Off the Boat; Memoria), David Iacono (The Summer I Turned Pretty; The Flight Attendant; City on a Hill), Audrina Miranda (The Big Door Prize; The Legend of Tayos; Antigone), Philippine Velge (Station Eleven; Summer of 85; Foreign Bodies), Bechir Sylvain (Claws; Black Summer; Grown-ish), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool; Midway; Alita: Battle Angel).
Gareth Edwards (The Creator; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; Godzilla) helmed the feature, with a screenplay from original Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp (Spider-Man; War of the Worlds; Mission: Impossible).
Jurassic World Rebirth roars into theaters July 2!
Check out new stills below:
A new era is born. This summer, three years after the Jurassic World trilogy concluded with each film surpassing $1 billion at the global box office, the enduring Jurassic series evolves in an ingenious new direction with Jurassic World Rebirth.
Anchored by iconic action superstar Scarlett Johansson, Emmy and SAG nominee Jonathan Bailey and two-time Oscar® winner Mahershala Ali, this action-packed new chapter sees an extraction team race to the most dangerous place on Earth, an island research facility for the original Jurassic Park, inhabited by the worst of the worst that were left behind.
Also starring acclaimed international stars Rupert Friend and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, the film is directed by dynamic visualist Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) from a script by original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp.
Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.
Academy Award® nominee Johansson plays skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett, contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park. There, in a terrain populated by dinosaurs of vastly different species, they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that has been hidden from the world for decades.