Jurassic World Rebirth divided critics when it opened in theaters earlier this year (literally; it has 50% on Rotten Tomatoes). Despite that, the movie managed to fend off competition from Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps to cement itself as the biggest hit of the summer.
Grossing $861 million at the worldwide box office, the Gareth Edwards-helmed film served as a successful fresh start and proved that there's plenty of life still left in the long-running dinosaur franchise.
Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson led the cast as the heroic Zora Bennett, and it appears we haven't seen the last of her. According to scooper Daniel Richtman, "A new Jurassic World movie with [Johansson] as the lead again is already in the works."
We'd imagine Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey will also return. The former was set to be killed off, but ended up being saved after Universal Pictures execs intervened. Still, there's currently no word on that or Edwards' potential involvement.
"This film, to me, really felt like it's singular. It's its own piece," Johansson said earlier this year. "And you hope that this film stands on its own without the support of the films that come before and that it doesn't need to extend beyond what it is."
"I mean, the film is called Rebirth, of course, but Gareth [Edwards, director], and I think Frank [Marshall, producer] and Steven [Spielberg, executive producer] and all the creatives on this project, wanted to establish this film as its own contained, standalone thing."
She added, "I'm a massive Jurassic universe fan, and there's certainly a lot of wonderful nostalgic winks or nods or Easter eggs or whatever you want to call them to Steven's movies and the Jurassic films that have been previous to this, I think the hope is that if you've never seen any of the other Jurassics, this is the one. That's the goal, anyway."
Jurassic World Rebirth might have been planned as a standalone movie, but grossing close to $900 million at a time when people are no longer flocking to theaters is an impressive feat, and all but guarantees this rumoured follow-up will happen.
We'll see. In the meantime, Universal has yet to officially announce its plans for the Jurassic franchise moving forward. However, if this movie is being fast-tracked, we could see it as soon as 2027 or 2028.
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 Scarlett 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.