Gareth Edwards Nearly Said No To ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ But the Script Changed Everything “Oh sh*t, it’s good”

When the script for Jurassic World: Rebirth landed on Gareth Edwards’ desk, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Fresh off a stretch of intense filmmaking, the director was looking for space, not another tentpole project. But the dinosaurs had other plans.

“I read this screenplay wanting to hate it because I just wanted to have a break,” Edwards told SFX Magazine, ahead of the magazine’s June 18 issue release. “I was all ready for the polite, ‘No.’ Like, ‘Oh, it was really good, but I just want to do my own thing. Thank you for considering me.’ I got to the end of the screenplay and was like, ‘Oh shit, it’s good… Damn it.’”

The script, written by Jurassic Park co-writer and Spielberg collaborator David Koepp, caught Edwards off guard. What he expected to be an easy pass became something much harder to walk away from. “All the characters really popped out,” he told SFX. “It was just one of those things where it was like, I can’t not do this.”

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali, Jurassic World: Rebirth is set to hit cinemas on July 2. The film marks a new chapter for the franchise, following the end of the Jurassic World trilogy. According to Edwards, the production had a clear timeline and wasn’t something that would drag on endlessly. “Also, it was all going to be done in about a year,” he said. “It was just like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to be able to do anything but this.’ But it was an opportunity of a lifetime, to some extent.”

Johansson plays Zora Bennett, a tactical operator assigned to protect a high-stakes research mission. The team is dropped into one of the last remaining dinosaur-rich zones on Earth, aiming to recover genetic samples that could unlock cures for human diseases. But with prehistoric predators dominating land, sea, and air, things spiral fast.

Ali stars as Duncan Kincard, a smuggler with his own motivations, and Bailey as Henry Loomis, the idealistic scientist leading the research. What begins as a controlled extraction quickly turns into a survival nightmare when the group crosses paths with a family shipwrecked by an aquatic attack. Together, they face an environment that doesn’t care about agendas, only instincts.

Now nearing the end of production, Edwards seems to be catching his breath after what he describes as an all-consuming process. “I dove in, really. We’re only just coming up for air.”. With the dinosaurs almost loose, Gareth Edwards might just get that break… unless the next script is even better.

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