Latest news with #DavidKoepp
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Joe Keery and Liam Neeson Team Up for a Gross-Out Sci-Fi Film From the Writer of ‘Jurassic Park'
There aren't many writers who you'd give top billing to over the cast, director, or intellectual property. But most writers aren't David Koepp. Koepp may not be a household name, but his films are. He's written the scripts for Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man, the last two Indiana Jones movies, Death Becomes Her, Panic Room, and more. He also directs (Premium Rush, Ghost Town, Stir of Echoes) and is a novelist too. He's a pretty prolific guy and the primary author behind a brand new, gross-out sci-fi comedy called Cold Storage. The book was released in 2019, but Koepp has now adapted it for the screen and attracted a few major stars for the ride. Joe Keery of Stranger Things and Georgina Campbell of Barbarian star, but Liam Neeson plays a major role, as do Vanessa Redgrave, Smile's Sosie Bacon, and others. Best to just watch this thing because it's truly a weird amalgamation of those talents, genres, and more. 'Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell), two young employees of a self-storage company built on the site of an old U.S. military base, have their wildest night shift ever when a parasitic fungus escapes from the lowest sublevel of the base, where it was sealed by the government decades before,' the film's official description reads. 'As the temperature rises underground, this highly contagious and rapidly mutating microorganism multiplies and unleashes its brain-controlling, body-bursting terrors on the facility's inhabitants— human and otherwise. With time running out, it's down to Teacake and Naomi, with the help of a grizzled retired bioterror operative (Neeson), to contain the merciless menace and prevent the explosive extinction of Mankind itself.' That sounds silly as hell, and the trailer certainly plays that up. You almost get the sense, since this is a first teaser, that there are still a lot of effects that have to be finished and that as much blood splatter as there is in this trailer, there will be much, much more to be seen in the film. Whether or not Cold Storage will be worthy of the names of those who helped create it, we don't know. But it is definitely now on our radar. Directed by Jonny Campbell, with a script by Koepp adapted from his own novel, it'll be out in 2026. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Daily Record
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
MOVIE REVIEW: We find out if sequel 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' is a roar-some reboot
Soaring set pieces and on safer ground with island return but still falls into similar traps to its immediate predecessors. Following the poor critical reception to the previous two Jurassic World movies it's time for a soft reboot. Writer David Koepp makes only brief mentions to events in those flicks - and bar a lumbering Brontosaurus trapped in the middle of New York we don't get to see any dinosaurs running wild in city settings. Instead, we head back to an island, this time Ile Saint-Hubert in the Atlantic Ocean, as a team embark on a mission to extract DNA from three dinosaurs for a ground breaking medical breakthrough. That may sound like 'seen it all before' territory, and some of it is, but new dinosaurs and environments as well as humans with varying motivations ensure things are kept reasonably fresh. Having helmed Monsters and the Godzilla reboot, Gareth Edwards was a wise choice to take the directing reins and he shoots a few of the franchise's best, most exciting set-pieces. Leading the way is an ocean-set face-off between the human cast and a Mosasaurus and several Spinosauruses. Scarlett Johansson ( Zora) brings star power as a mercenary with a heart amid a fateful previous mission and Jonathan Bailey's passionate, wise-cracking Dr Henry Loomis is a spiritual successor to Sam Neill's Dr Grant. I'm not sure we needed the Delgado family - and David Iacono's Xavier can be a grating presence - but they serve up more people in peril to take us to different parts of the island. Rupert Friend ( Martin) may as well have 'baddie' stamped on his forehead but he is a lot more charismatic and opinionated than most of the series' human antagonists. Like the other Jurassic World flicks we get DNA-spliced, mutated dinosaurs, headed up by the colossal Distortus rex which doesn't get much screen time and can't evoke the fear of other main animal players in the franchise. The T rex makes a welcome comeback - and for once doesn't save the day - and there's no sequel-baiting; Rebirth is a standalone adventure. Which is probably for the best as while this is one of the series' better sequels, recapturing the magic and wonder of the original continues to prove an almighty, probably impossible, challenge. Pop me an email at and I will pass on your comments – and any movie or TV show recommendations you have – to your fellow readers. *Don't miss the latest headlines from around Lanarkshire. Sign up to our newsletters here. And did you know Lanarkshire Live had its own app? Download yours for free here.
Geek Tyrant
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Steven Spielberg's No-Nonsense Notes on JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH and Wanting To Avoid Self Reference — GeekTyrant
Steven Spielberg may not be in the director's chair for Jurassic World Rebirth , but make no mistake, his fingerprints are all over it. As executive producer, the Jurassic Park mastermind had some clear, uncompromising guidance for screenwriter David Koepp, who returned to the franchise after penning Jurassic Park and The Lost World . While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Koepp revealed that Spielberg wasn't interested in nostalgia bait or safe, crowd-pleasing callbacks. Koepp recalled of Spielberg's notes. 'That it should be scary. We should see some things that we've never seen before. Let's make the science as close to real as we can. And something that is important to him with everything — but in this movie in particular — he really wanted to avoid anything that was a self reference. 'He does not like to quote himself. He's allergic to it. If you put something in that rings too familiar, he'll say, 'Didn't I already do that? Don't do that.'' Spielberg also pushed Koepp to think about the legacy of the franchise and where it could meaningfully go next. Koepp explained: 'He [Spielberg] is the one who started this [franchise]. It's his. So I think he felt a certain care and responsibility to ask, 'How can this go on? What would make it really good?'' The result is Jurassic World Rebirth , a post-Dominion tale set five years later, where Scarlett Johansson leads a squad of mercenaries and scientists on a dangerous mission to harvest dinosaur DNA for medical breakthroughs. Of course, the dinosaurs aren't exactly on board with the plan. I loved the film and think it's the best in the franchise since Spielberg's original movie. I had a a lot of fun watching this one, and I think audiences will enjoy it as well. Directed by Gareth Edwards and now playing in theaters, Jurassic World Rebirth stars Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Ed Skrein.
San Francisco Chronicle
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Jurassic World' needed a restart. Steven Spielberg knew who to call
An eyeball, big, yellowish, distinctly inhuman, stares raptly between wooden slats, part of a large crate. The eye darts from side to side quickly, alert as hell. So begins David Koepp's script to 1993's 'Jurassic Park.' Like much of Koepp's writing, it's crisply terse and intensely visual. It doesn't tell the director (in this case Steven Spielberg) where to put the camera, but it nearly does. 'I asked Steven before we started: What are the limitations about what I can write?' Koepp recalls. 'CGI hadn't really been invented yet. He said: 'Only your imagination.'' Yet in the 32 years since penning the adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel, Koepp has established himself as one of Hollywood's top screenwriters not through the boundlessness of his imagination but by his expertise in limiting it. Koepp is the master of the 'bottle' movie, films hemmed in by a single location or condensed timed frame. From David Fincher's 'Panic Room' (2002) to Steven Soderbergh's 'Presence' (2025), he excels at corralling stories into uncluttered, headlong movie narratives. Koepp can write anything — as long as there are parameters. 'The great film scholar and historian David Bordwell and I were talking about that concept once and he said, 'Because the world is too big? ' I said, 'That's it, exactly,'' Koepp recalls. 'The world is too big. If I can put the camera anywhere I want, if anybody on the entire planet can appear in this film, if it can last 130 years, how do I even begin? It makes me want to take a nap. 'So I've always looked for bottles in which to put the delicious wine.' By some measure, the world of ' Jurassic World ' got too big. In the last entry, 2022's not particularly well received ' Jurassic World: Dominion,' the dinosaurs had spread across the planet. 'I don't know where else to go with that,' Koepp says. Koepp, a 62-year-old native of Wisconsin, hadn't written a 'Jurassic' movie since the second one, 1997's 'The Lost World.' Back then, Brian De Palma, whom Koepp worked with on 'Carlito's Way' and 'Mission: Impossible,' took to calling him 'dinosaur boy.' Koepp soon after moved onto other challenges. But when Spielberg called him up a few years ago and asked, 'Do you have one more in you?' Koepp had one request: 'Can we start over?' And so, 'Jurassic World Rebirth' is a fresh start for one of Hollywood's biggest multi-billion-dollar franchises. It's a new cast of characters (Oakland's own Mahershala Ali, Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey co-star), a new director (Gareth Edwards) and a new storyline. But just as they were 32 years ago, the dinosaurs are again Koepp's to play with. 'The first page reassured me,' says Edwards. 'It said: 'Written by David Koepp.'' For 'Jurassic World Rebirth,' Koepp wanted to reorder the franchise. Inspired by Chuck Jones' 'commandments' for the Road Runner cartoons (the Road Runner only says 'meep meep'; all products are from the ACME Corporation, etc.), Koepp put down nine governing principles for the 'Jurassic' franchise. They included things like 'humor is oxygen' and that the dinosaurs are animals, not monsters. A key to 'Rebirth' was geographically herding the dinosaurs. In the new movie, they've clustered around the equator, drawn to the tropical environment. Like 'Jurassic Park,' the action takes place primarily on an island. Going into the project, Edwards was warned about his screenwriter's convictions. 'At the end of my meeting with Spielberg, he just smiled and said, 'That's great. If you think we were difficult, wait until you meet David Koepp,''' says Edwards, laughing. But Edwards and Koepp quickly bonded over similar tastes in movies, like the original 'King Kong,' a poster of which hangs in Koepp's office. On set, Edwards would sometimes find the need for 30 seconds of new dialogue. 'Within like a minute, I'd get this perfectly written 30 second interaction that was on theme, funny, had a reversal in it — perfect,' says Edwards. 'It was like having your own ChatGPT but actually really good at writing.' In the summer, especially, it's common to see a long list of names under the screenplay. Blockbuster-making is, increasingly, done by committee. The stakes are too high, the thinking goes, to leave it to one writer. But 'Jurassic World Rebirth' bears just Koepp's credit. 'There's an old saying: 'No one of us is as dumb as all of us,'' Koepp says. 'When you have eight or 10 people who have significant input into the script, the odds are stacked enormously against you. You're trying to please a lot of different people, and it often doesn't go well.' The only time that worked, in Koepp's experience, was Sam Raimi's 2002 'Spider-Man.' 'I was also hired and fired three times on that movie,' he says, 'so maybe they knew what they were doing.' Koepp, though, prefers to — after research and outlining — let a movie topple out of his mind as rapidly as possible. 'I like to gun it out and clean up the mess later,' he says. But the string of 'Jurassic World Rebirth' may have tested even Koepp's prodigious output. The intense period of writing, which fell before, during and after the writers strike, he says, meant five months without a day off. 'I might have broke something,' he says, shaking his head. Still, the film also shows a veteran screenwriter working in high gear, judiciously meting out details and keeping dinosaurs hurtling forward. Anything like a perfect script — for Koepp, that's 'Rosemary's Baby' or 'Jaws' — remains elusive. But even when you come close, there are always critics. 'After the first 'Jurassic' movie, a fifth-grade class all wrote letters to me, which was very nice,' Koepp recalls. 'Then they wrote, 'P.S., when you do the next one, don't have it take so long to get to the island.' Everyone's got a note!'
Tom's Guide
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
When is ‘Jurassic World Rebirth' streaming? Here's our best guess
Marking the fourth "Jurassic World" spinoff and the seventh movie in the "Jurassic Park" franchise overall, "Jurassic World Rebirth" once again sees a ragtag group of characters come face to face with all sorts of terrifying dinosaurs. And for the first time in a long time, you don't have to have seen any of the previous films to dive in. Since it opened in theaters on Wednesday, July 2, "Jurassic World Rebirth" has already made big bucks, pulling in over $318 million at the global box office. But if you're waiting to watch the movie from the comfort of your own home, here's my best guess at when "Jurassic World Rebirth" might come to streaming services. Currently, the only way to watch "Jurassic World Rebirth" is by seeing it on the big screen. Given its 52% score on Rotten Tomatoes, though, you might think it a safer bet to skip it in cinemas; tickets aren't cheap, after all! All the "Jurassic" movies are distributed by Universal Pictures. The studio typically makes its films available for digital purchase and rental on platforms like Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV Plus around one month after their release, so keep your eyes peeled as early as August 5. There is a chance, however, that the studio will extend "Jurassic World Rebirth's" theatrical run due to its financial success. When it comes to subscription-based streaming, Peacock will almost certainly house "Jurassic World Rebirth" since it, like Universal Pictures, is also owned by Comcast. There, films are usually dropped between 49 to 120 days after their theatrical release. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. But "Jurassic World Dominion" dropped on Peacock after 102 days, so it's possible that "Jurassic World Rebirth" will follow suit and debut on the platform in late October. After an initial run on Peacock, the movie will switch platforms to Amazon's Prime Video for a 10-month period before returning to its original platform for a subsequent four months due to a long-term streaming deal. Of course, these dates are still just a guess, but as soon as we get an official "Jurassic World Rebirth" streaming date, we'll be sure to share it here, so keep checking back. While the previous "Jurassic World" titles saw the scaly antagonists enter into our world, with Pteranodons flying over Las Vegas and velociraptors running amok in Malta, the new outing goes back to basics: a remote island. "Let's make dinosaurs exotic and special so that we have to go seek them out instead of, you know, fighting with them over a cab," writer David Koepp, who penned the original "Jurassic Park" back in 1993 and its sequel "The Lost World", recently told The Hollywood Reporter. With that, you'd only really have to have a vague understanding of the "Jurassic Park" universe up until now — especially since the only thing that directly connects "Rebirth" to the other movies is a character namedropping Sam Neill's Alan Grant. "Rebirth" follows Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), a mercenary tasked with breaking into a restricted research site on Ile Saint-Hubert and extracting life-saving blood samples from some of the area's most dangerous dinosaurs. Her employer is Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), a shady executive from the global biotech company Parker Genix. Their team, which includes paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and covert ops guy Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), travel an awful long way to get to the dinosaur-ridden wilderness (226 miles east of French Guiana, to be exact). But in the not-so-distant future, you won't even have to lift yourself off the couch to do the same.
