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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!'
USA Today
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Jurassic World Rebirth' brings back iconic scene that Spielberg cut
"Jurassic Park" is all about bringing the past back to life, so for one of the most pulse-pounding sequences in the new entry, the franchise returns to where it all began. In a standout scene from "Jurassic World Rebirth" (in theaters July 2), Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his family, who find themselves on an island filled with dinosaurs, board a raft and are pursued on a river by a Tyrannosaurus rex. When director Gareth Edwards read the script by "Jurassic Park" screenwriter David Koepp, he was so impressed, he thought, "This film's worth directing just for this scene alone." It was only after he finished shooting that Edwards stumbled upon a book about the making of "Jurassic Park" and discovered a nearly identical scene was intended to be in the original Steven Spielberg film more than three decades ago. "I had no idea," he says. Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox The scene is straight out of Michael Crichton's 1990 "Jurassic Park" novel, only instead of the Delgados, Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill in the movie), Tim Murphy and Lex Murphy board a raft and are pursued by a T. rex. There were even storyboards made during the production of the Spielberg classic, but the scene was dropped because of technical limitations. "This was 1992, and making a T. rex, period, was going to be this enormous challenge," Koepp recalls. "In the early '90s, water was still a big challenge for CG, and so the idea of making a T. rex and then having it swim was a bridge too far." Coming off a trilogy of films starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, "Rebirth" introduces a whole new cast of characters to the "Jurassic" world. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey are adventurers on a mission to obtain dinosaur DNA for a breakthrough drug that could cure heart disease. The trio cross paths with the Delgados after a dinosaur has destroyed the family's sailboat and they're making their way across the island to find rescue. Koepp, who hasn't written a "Jurassic" movie since 1997's "The Lost World," was recruited for "Rebirth" by Spielberg, an executive producer on the film. When brainstorming, one of the first things they talked about was finally revisiting the raft scene. "That was like being able to scratch something that has itched for 32 years," Koepp says, and adds it was "worth the wait" for computer-generated imagery to get good enough to do the sequence justice. This wasn't the only instance of scrapped "Jurassic" material being revived in "Rebirth." In one scene, paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) delivers a monologue about humanity's capacity to destroy itself, remarking that "when the Earth gets tired of us, it will shake us off like a summer cold." Koepp, drawing on Crichton's novel, had Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) utter that line in an early draft of "Jurassic Park" and has wanted to find a place for it ever since. "I remember asking Steven ... did that line ever show up?" Koepp says. "And he said, 'Nope, that's definitely not in ("Jurassic Park").' So it was like, great. It's going in here." 'Jurassic World Rebirth' aims to make dinosaurs 'special again' The raft scene may not have fit in, had "Rebirth" not gone back to "Jurassic" basics by returning to the island setting. While 2022's "Jurassic World Dominion" ended with dinosaurs and humans coexisting around the world, "Rebirth" effectively resets to the status quo of the first "Jurassic" trilogy by revealing the Earth's climate has made it impossible for dinosaurs to survive outside of a few tropical islands. Koepp wanted to make dinosaurs "special again and harder to find" and bring back the "ocean and jungle adventure aspect" of the series. The idea of dinosaurs interacting with humans on the mainland had been explored thoroughly enough in previous films, he felt − including his own "The Lost World," which ended with a T. rex loose in San Diego. The plot point was also once again inspired by the original novel, in which Ian points out how different the environment is today compared to 65 million years ago during his famous "life finds a way" speech. That's not the only reason it's a tough time to be a dinosaur in "Rebirth," which establishes the public has largely lost interest in the creatures. Edwards and Koepp both saw this as a meta reflection of the issue facing "Jurassic" itself, six sequels in. "My biggest problem is, there's been a lot of 'Jurassic' films," Edwards says. "What can you do that people haven't seen before? The script acknowledged that problem on page 1. I thought it was very honest and a really good way to reset and start a new chapter."
The Advertiser
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
If you're going to let dinosaurs run amok, you need these five ground rules
If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP
Chicago Tribune
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Jurassic World Rebirth' is tense but a downer, with dinosaur fatigue part of the story
No novel in history has tailored every paragraph and plot point more deliberately for the movies than Michael Crichton's 'Jurassic Park.' There's a reason. Crichton mapped it out as a screenplay first, back in the pre-digital 1980s, when screen dinosaurs looked a little goofy still. The 1993 Steven Spielberg film changed that, building on early '90s breakthroughs in digital effects found in 'Terminator 2' and others. Spielberg oversaw several storyline changes as well, in his commercially canny pursuit of roaring terror and solemn wonder in more evenly alternating currents. The franchise has gone back and forth between those currents ever since. We've had interesting, controversial sequels (J.A. Bayona's 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,' especially when it turned into a gothic haunted house suspense affair) and billion-dollar mediocrities ('Jurassic World: Dominion'). So what's the deal with 'Jurassic World Rebirth,' beyond its blatant misspelling of the word in its title that clearly should be 'Reboot'? Mixed, let's say, and that means mixed often within the same scene. More broadly, it's mixed in the early critical reaction, considered a widely well-regarded success in the British press but mostly bleh here in these United States. 'Jurassic World Rebirth' is a genuinely peculiar seesaw, with 'Godzilla' and 'Rogue One' director Gareth Edwards managing some occasionally striking jolts amid a lot of tonal uncertainty. Rarely an exuberant spirit as a filmmaker, Edwards here directs a rather mournful script by veteran pro David Koepp, the primary adapting writer on the '93 franchise-starter. Coming off 'KIMI' and 'Black Bag' with director Steven Soderbergh, Koepp's return to dinosaurs builds its premise on what might be termed the inevitability of franchise fatigue, coded here as dinosaur fatigue in the popular imagination. The world, as this movie depicts it, has plainly had it with the human/dinosaur integration experiment. Dinosaurs are no longer trending. Fleetingly, one poor specimen glimpsed early in 'Jurassic World Rebirth,' under the Brooklyn Bridge, lives with the indignity of graffiti on his aging hide. 'Nobody cares about these animals anymore,' we hear at one point, evoking what may have been the thought balloon floating above Koepp's head as he wrote this seventh 'Jurassic' go-around. Koepp's script imagines a Big Pharma weasel (Rupert Friend, inspired by Paul Reiser's 'Aliens' antagonist every step of the way) hiring globe-trotting mercenaries (Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali), an idealistic museum paleontologist (Jonathan Bailey) and a bloodthirsty hunk ('Game of Thrones' alum Ed Skrein), among others, to harvest precious DNA samples from three different bioengineered dinosaur species — land, air and water dwellers. The illegal but potentially lucrative gig takes them by boat to the forbidden (fictional) Caribbean island of Ile Saint-Hubert, not far from French Guiana. Thailand provided most of the movie's lush exterior locations. En route, the passengers on the Ali character's boat encounter two problems: the mighty and mighty hungry water dweller known as Mosasaurus, followed by a meteorological phenomenon known as the B Plot. Much of 'Jurassic World Rebirth' follows the travails of a sailing family's oceangoing excursion, interrupted by a Mosasaurus attack. Adrift but alive, dad (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), daughter (Luna Blaise), daughter's unpromising boyfriend (David Iacono) and daughter's younger sister (Audrina Miranda) are rescued by the mercenaries' expedition. Then they're separated on the island from their rescuers. Worst vacation ever! The DNA is to be used for life-saving heart disease cures, to the benefit of millions, and with trillions in profits. It's a time-tested setup promising reasonably high stakes. Yet the early dialogue sequences are determinedly casual and easygoing to the point of 'yeah whatever.' Johansson and Ali are both formidable wellsprings of charisma but their roles stick to basics. Most everyone on screen has either suffered or is in the process of suffering, or both. Ali and Johansson's characters carry deep-seeded emotional wounds from the loss of loved ones. The anguish endured by the rescued family, especially by Miranda's traumatized preteen character, render large swaths of 'Jurassic Park Rebirth' more grueling than exciting. Compared to 165 million years for the small-brain dinosaurs, humans will be lucky to last a million years on this climate-changed, nuke-crazy planet, the Bailey character warns at one point. The movie feels more than a little down in the mouth, even with its string of cliffhangers, some visually impressive, tied together with some ill-fitting comic relief. The moments of awe, involving the pleasant, plant-eating dinosaurs, provide callbacks to previous movies (cue the John Williams 'Jurassic Park' theme for another reprise). But the conspicuous newcomer, a bio-engineered mutant misfire called Distortus rex, pushes things into a different breed of monster movie. And yet: There are flashes and occasional whole sequences when Edwards' directorial eye snaps into focus, as in the brutal but superquick demise of one shipmate, seconds after making it to safety on shore, only to learn that safety is relative. The strategic conceals and reveals of the latest predators recall the best of the director's 'Godzilla,' unfashionably sparing in the visual exploitation of its antihero. But the first-rate digital creature designs must contend with an air of weariness. Still, I'd rank 'Rebirth' ahead of two or three previous chapters in a franchise whose sole consistency lies in a simple question: How have humans survived this long, even? 'Jurassic World Rebirth' — 2.5 stars (out of 4) MPA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references, language, and a drug reference) Running time: 2:13 How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 2
Gulf Today
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
David Koepp is back with a fresh start for ‘Jurassic World Rebirth'
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 1 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 says. '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 juice.' Mahershala Ali (left), Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Rupert Friend attend the 'Jurassic World Rebirth' New York Premiere at Lincoln Center on June 23, 2025. Agence France-Presse 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 Pewaukee, 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?' 'Jurassic World Rebirth,' which opens in theatres on July 2, is a fresh start for one of Hollywood's biggest multi-billion-dollar franchises. It's a new cast of characters (Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali 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.'' Bechir Sylvain (left), Jonathan Bailey, and Scarlett Johansson in a scene from 'Jurassic World Rebirth.' Associated Press For many moviegoers, that opening credit has been a signal that what follows is likely to be smartly scripted, brightly paced and neatly situated. His script to Ron Howard's 1994 news drama 'The Paper' took place over 24 hours. 'Secret Window' (2004) was set in an upstate New York cabin. Even bigger scale films like 'War of the Worlds' favour the fate of one family over global calamity. 'I hear those ideas and I get excited. OK, now I'm constrained,' says Koepp. 'A structural or aesthetic constraint is like the Hayes Code. They had to come up with many other interesting ways to tell story.' Koepp's bottles can fit either summer spectacles or low-budget indies. 'Jurassic World Rebirth' is the third film penned by Koepp just this year, following a nifty pair of thrillers with Steven Soderbergh in 'Presence' and 'Black Bag.' 'Presence,' like 'Panic Room,' stays within a family home, and it's seen entirely from the perspective of a ghost. 'Black Bag' deliciously combines marital drama with spy movie, organised around a dinner party and a polygraph test. Those films completed a zippy trilogy with Soderbergh, beginning with 2022's blistering pandemic-set 'Kimi.' Much of Koepp's career, particularly recently, run through the two Stevens: Soderbergh and Spielberg. 'What they have in common is they both would have absolutely killed it in the 1940s,' Koepp says. 'In the studio system in the 1940s, if Jack Warner said 'I'm putting you on the Wally Beery wrestling picture.' Either one of them would have said, 'Great, here's what I'm going to do.' They both share that sensibility of: How do we get this done?' Callina Liang in a scene from 'Presence,' a film written by David Koepp. Associated Press Spielberg and Koepp recently wrapped production on Spielberg's untitled new science fiction film, said to be especially meaningful to Spielberg. He gave a 50-page treatment to Koepp to turn into a script. 'It's even more focused than I've ever seen him on a movie,' says Koepp. 'There would be times - we'd be in different time zones - I'd wake up and there were 35 texts, and this went on for about a year. He's as locked in on that movie as I've ever seen him, and he's a guy who locks in.' 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. Associated Press
