Dinosaur fans have something to look forward to this summer as Universal Pictures and director Gareth Edwards are bringing us “Jurassic World Rebirth.” This is the seventh installment in the long-running series, dating back to Steven Spielberg’s original blockbuster classic “Jurassic Park” in 1993. More than 30 years in, it’s time for something different and Edwards is taking us to a new location that has never been explored on screen in any of the previous films. Get ready to go back to where it all began.
“This island was the research facility for the original Jurassic Park,” Scarlett Johansson’s Zora Bennett says in the first teaser trailer for “Jurassic World Rebirth.” This is not Isla Nublar, where John Hammond placed his ill-fated dinosaur amusement park. Rather, this is an entirely new island where Hammond’s team of geneticists conducted the original experiments that led to bringing dinosaurs back to life in the first place. The island, as of this writing, doesn’t have a name, but it is located near the Equator.
“You’re in a new place, you don’t know what’s around the corner. You’ve got a different jungle, you’ve got more water, you’ve got higher cliffs,” producer Frank Marshall recently told Vanity Fair in a preview piece for the film. “There’s a little bit of everything that’s scary.”
“Rebirth” picks up five years after the events of 2022’s “Jurassic World Dominion,” which saw dinosaurs living in the world in and amongst humans. However, Earth’s ecosystem has proved largely inhospitable to dinosaurs, with many dying off. The ones that remain exist in isolated environments near the Equator with climates similar to the one they originally lived in millions of years ago. The three biggest dinosaurs contain the key to a drug in their DNA that can bring life-saving benefits to humankind. Zora and her team are tasked with leading a dangerous mission to retrieve this DNA from the dinos.
The film was written by David Koepp, who penned the original adaptation of Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” novel for the silver screen. Koepp recently told /Film that he saw “Rebirth” as a chance for “Jurassic” to “start over.” At least part of that involves going back to the past to uncover some long buried secrets.
Jurassic Park history will be uncovered in Jurassic World Rebirth
Isla Nublar was introduced in “Jurassic Park” and housed the original park. That island was also the primary location used in 2015’s “Jurassic World,” which brought viewers to a functioning dinosaur theme park before things go haywire. 2018’s “Fallen Kingdom” quite literally destroyed Isla Nublar and wiped it off the map, meaning the movies can’t go back there even if they wanted to, barring a total reboot.
The other big location seen in the previous films was Isla Sorna, aka Site B. This was first introduced in 1997’s “The Lost World” as an island nearby to Isla Nublar where company InGen would nurture the dinosaurs before bringing them to the park. It was also the primary location used in “Jurassic Park III,” a movie that also introduced the Spinosaurus, a dinosaur that will make its long-awaited return in “Rebirth.” The movies haven’t dealt much with Site B and that remains something of a question mark but Koepp and the filmmakers were interested in exploring something new with this latest installment, rather than treading once again on well-trodden turf.
Edwards, who previously directed 2014’s “Godzilla” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” is going to show us some of the less-than-perfect experiments that were brought to life before Dr. Henry Wu and the rest of the genetics team figured out the process to create dinosaurs from scratch. “These are the dinosaurs that didn’t work. There’s some mutations in there,” Marshall explained in the Vanity Fair piece. “They’re all based on real dinosaur research, but they look a little different.”
There is also a mysterious mutant dinosaur in “Rebirth,” which suggests we’re going to see some of the horrific missteps made along the way. This is an important location within the history of this franchise and the movie will surely reveal some of the rich history that has yet to be explored on screen. Even though this sequel is going back to the past, it does represent an opportunity to show audiences something new.
“Jurassic World Rebirth” hits theaters on July 2, 2025.