Fun, frothy, dino-filled and star-studded, last year’s Jurassic World Rebirth may not exactly have been a game changer for the Jurassic Park saga, but it was a ton of fun and it did make a none-too-shabby $872 million at the box office. By almost any metric, you could safely call the seventh instalment in everyone’s favourite fossil-fuelled franchise a roaring success. But per Deadline‘s reporting, the next _J_urassic World will need to, uh, find a way without director Gareth Edwards, who has left the project due to that old dragon “creative differences”.
Insiders tell Deadline that Edwards left the project due to the aforementioned creative differences issue, specifics of which are not currently known, and will instead shift his energy to other, original projects — which isn’t a bad thing, by any means, as the filmmaker’s last non-IP outing gave us the brilliant The _Creato_r. On Universal’s part, the studio released a short statement simply, amicably saying: “We had an incredible experience working with Gareth on Jurassic World Rebirth.” The search is already underway for Edwards’ successor, who will become the sixth director the Jurassic franchise has had across its 33-year history.
In somewhat more positive news, it is believed that Mahershala Ali, Scarlett Johansson, and Jonathan Bailey — around whom the franchise’s Rebirth reboot centred — will all return for another rollercoaster reptilian romp, once again penned by franchise veteran David Koepp. With shooting due to get underway on the saga’s next chapter as soon as 2027, Universal and Amblin are going to need to get a wiggle on finding their next dinosaur handler in time. Hold onto your butts!
