[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Jurassic World Rebirth.]
Dinosaurs have clawed their way back to the big screen with the newest installment of theJurassic Parkfranchise.Jurassic World Rebirthis set five years after the events ofDominion, but largely functions as a standalone story with a new batch of key characters.Rupert Friend’s Martin Krebs is largely responsible for getting the narrative going. He’s a Big Pharma representative and the company he works for is eager to get their hands on some very specific dino genetic material, so he hiresScarlett Johansson’s Zora to escort him to Ile Saint-Hubert, a long-forgotten top-secret R&D facility run by InGen.
WithJurassic World: Rebirth, the creative DNA is modified by directorGareth Edwards, the filmmaker behindGodzilla(2014) andRogue One: A Star Wars Story, while longtime franchise producer,Frank Marshall, returns to guide the series through another phase of reinvention.
Following an exclusive Collider screeningof the movie,Perri Nemiroffhosted a Q&A with Edwards and Marshall to dive into as many behind-the-scenes details as possible. Marshall reveals how they came to the conclusion that this was the perfect next story idea for the franchise, while Edwards reflects on the process ofbeing selected as the director for the film. The pair also discuss shooting on film versus digital, changes to the script during the production process, designing dinosaurs, and deciding what references to past films were okay to include in this new one.
Gareth Edwards Was Terrified to Pitch to Steven Spielberg
“It’s like being with the gods of Olympus.”
PERRI NEMIROFF:Frank, you’re getting my first question, because you’ve worked on a number of these. I’m really curious to hear about the conversation afterDominion. Did you always know that you wanted the next installment of this franchise to have a standalone feel?
FRANK MARSHALL: No. I just wanted to do another one. We had the trilogy and the trilogy, and we thought, “Okay, we need a new story. A fresh start.” That was really the basis for us continuing to go forward. Then, Mr. Spielberg spoke to Mr. [David] Koepp, and Mr. Koepp had an idea, and a great one.
Do you remember what idea number one was, the first thing you heard from the two of them that made you say, “It’s time to go?”
MARSHALL: It was this. It was this: an island where the mutants are the ones that didn’t work, that were being created. It was a really great idea. It was during the writers' strike. I hope David doesn’t get into any trouble, but I don’t think he did any writing during the writers' strike. He had this idea, and then when the writers' strike was over, he really wrote the script incredibly fast, and we got it in December of 2023. Then, Gareth came on board in February of ‘24?
GARETH EDWARDS: I’m not sure. My only way to date it is that there was this other film we did, and it was not me, it was the amazing crew that worked on it, they got nominated for an Oscar, so you get to go to this silly sort of lunch where there are loads of A-list celebrities. It’s like being with the gods of Olympus. You said to me, “Spielberg’s going to be there. Go up and say hi.” I was like, “There’s no fucking way I’m going to tap him on the shoulder and say hi.” I was stood, at one point, and I think someone was taking a picture of me, and we had to move out of the way because we were blocking this guy, and it was Spielberg. I was like, “Oh my god, it’s him.” So, I know we were talking around that weekend, and that was February-something.
What did you say to Spielberg?
EDWARDS: I didn’t say anything. I was scared!
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When the first conversation finally happened, how did it go?
EDWARDS: So, they sent the screenplay over the weekend when we first chatted, and then I went into Kennedy/Marshall, and for those that have never been in Kennedy/Marshall, there are a lot of nice rooms. There’s this particular room that’s got loads of photography around the sides, and it’s all kind of like the history of every movie you’ve ever grown up loving, and your face on most of them, [Frank]. So, it’s very intimidating already because you go, “Oh my god, they made all the masterpieces that I love.” Then Frank comes in, and he’s a very polite guy, as you can see, and I thought to myself, “I’m just going to be honest. I’m just going to say what I would do if I were the director of this. If they hate it, we’ll all shake hands, and it’s nice to have the meeting.”
Frank was just listening, and I kept going through it, and you didn’t interrupt me or anything. I was like, “Oh my god, did he hate it?” I just couldn’t read you at all. Then, I got to the end, and you went, “Okay, can you come back tomorrow and repeat all of that exactly as you said it to Steven?” And in my brain, I was like, “Does he mean Steven Spielberg? Or is there another Steven, like head of development at Kennedy/Marshall? Stephen Watkins?” So, the next day we were in Amblin. We met up, and I’ve got to say, I was pretty nervous becausethe idea of pitching aJurassicfilm to Steven Spielberg is like up there in terms of life events.
MARSHALL: Well, it was a key moment. The train had already left the station because we knew we had this release date of next week. I knew that we needed to hit the ground running, and we’d already started to look for locations. We picked the two boats already. We’d done a lot of pre-production without a director. I knew that Gareth,anydirector, would want to put their own stamp on it, but it couldn’t be too big of a stamp that we couldn’t have something that would stop the momentum of that train moving forward. So, I wanted to hear the pitch first, and he gave a pitch that I thought would work with Steven, that he could put his own stamp on but we could continue to make the movie without holding anything up.
Evolving the Script of ‘Rebirth’ From First Draft to Final Product
“It was a bit of a dream project.”
Gareth, can you tell us the biggest difference between the first draft of this screenplay that you saw and the finished film that everyone just watched?
EDWARDS: Gosh. The essence of it is the same. Basically, the structure is the same, the characters are the same, the story is the same. Everything that David Koepp brought to it, which was fantastic, was the same. Then really, as a director, you’re now basically interpreting all of these ideas visually. Do you remember the opening?
MARSHALL: It was a little more conventional, the beginning. We can tell all kinds of stories about the beginning, because we were going to shoot the beginning in London. It was a walk-and-talk on a street somewhere here, probably right down here somewhere, and then you had this idea thatyou wanted to show one of the dinosaurs suffering and not making it.
EDWARDS: Yeah, that’s the sort of thing it was. The scene was there, but it was like, “Oh, instead of walking down the street, could we see a dying dinosaur?”
MARSHALL: Instead of just talking about the dinosaurs dying out here in our environment, Gareth thought it would be better to see one, which is always a good idea.
EDWARDS: Then the actual opening was just a little brief glimpse of the island, and then I was like, “Oh, I’d really love to see the moment the lab all goes wrong, and have this incident.” So I just pitched a little silly idea, thinking, “Oh, they’re going to reject that,” but you allowed us to go do it. There are little things like that. It was basically everything that was there. Some of it, you didn’t need to say a word. I felt like the Mosasaur chase was spot on, the raft sequence was all spot on. There are just little ideas here and there. Then David’s really good because he’s also a director. So sometimes you’d be like, “David,” and you’d be like, “How do I bring this up?” Because it’s his work, and he’s written it, and you kind of want to tweak something, and it might be to do with the set pieces. You’d be like, “I’ve got this idea…” And he always goes, “Gareth, if you just accepted this and shot it just how I wrote it, I would be really disappointed. If you’re a director worth your salt, you should be telling me, ‘I got this. I’m going to do it this other way.'” So, he was encouraging running with it.
Honestly, it was a dream to work with him. He’s who he is for a reason. I’ll tell you what, there are a few things that are really interesting. This was the first film I’ve ever worked on where a script existed, that everybody in the room, you, Steven, David Koepp, Universal, and myself, could all point out and go, “Let’s go make that. That’s the movie.” The fact that we did it in a year and a quarter rather than two and a half years, it made that all possible. The other thing that’s really super interesting, because after that meeting with Steven, you could tell I was probably a bit nervous, and at the end, Steven goes something like, “Well, if you thought that was tricky, wait until you meet David.” Like, really setting him up like this monster, like this D-Rex, and he wasn’t at all.
As soon as I started a Zoom with him, because he was in New York, and I was in LA, behind him was this big poster of King Kong, and I started talking about King Kong, and he started talking about it. We just talked about monster movies, and I realized the key to this waseverybody in Hollywood, anywhere, making films are all trying to do the same thing, which is make a great film.Where the conflict comes from is if you disagree about what a great film is. If what your idea of a great film is not what someone else thinks is a great film, then that relationship’s going to always be tricky. So, David and I were really on the same page, aesthetically, in terms of the taste of movies. So, I personally feel it was a really smooth ride, and it had to be because of the deadline. It was a bit of a dream project.
Capturing ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ on Film Was “Give and Take”
“It’s a luxury to shoot on film.”
We just got aJurassicmovie shot on 35mm, which is quite ambitious. Gareth, this is your first time shooting on 35 versus digital. Can you tell us about some learning curves you experienced, and also why you thought it was necessary to tell the story that way?
EDWARDS: Well, because I love his films, and I just wanted it to look like his movies. You need support from the producers if you’re going to shoot on film. It wasn’t a straightforward approach. There were two days before we could see anything. We were moving locations.
MARSHALL: In today’s day and age, it’s a luxury to shoot on film. So, in our back and forth with the studio about the budget, it’s a little more expensive to shoot on film,andwe don’t get to see it for two days, and maybe three when you’re in Thailand. We do get to see the playback, so we know what we have, but it could get damaged in transit, there could be a hair on the gate, all those kinds of things. But part of my job is to support the director’s vision. We had to fight right down to the end to find the money to pay for the film. It’s a give and take. Well, “Can you not have this, and then we can pay for the film?”
I have to saythis movie was one of my favorite collaborations with everybody. The cast. We had a fantastic cast, who we didn’t even know when we were putting it together how great they would be. They became a family. We went on this journey together. They would have questions about their character, we would talk about it. We would call David; David was here. He would get on the phone. He would discuss it. We would tweak it a bit. It was just an ongoing process that was really wonderful.
Those scenes at the end were shot at the end of our schedule, the night scenes on the back lot in London. We didn’t know where the Mutadon was going to catch up with the group, so we’d be back there trying to work it out. Then, as you get on movies, we had something happen that was completely out of left field. Rupert Friend was having a baby, and it was all scheduled to happen after he wrapped. And guess what? It happened one night when we were in the middle of shooting that last scene. We worked around it. The poor stunt double.
EDWARDS: What I heard was Rupert was hanging from a wire, and it was the shot where the D-Rex has grabbed him and is about to eat him, and he’s going, “Ah!” He got the phone call on his mobile phone in his pocket that his wife was giving birth.
MARSHALL: Two weeks early.
EDWARDS: Essentially, my joke to him was, “At that point, then, basically, your life ended in two different ways, didn’t it?”
That kid needs a plush D-Rex or something.
EDWARDS: What was funny is you do ADR on a movie, which is basically where the actors come in, they replace dialogue, and you get it clean, or you get new ideas for dialogue. He came in and did a session, and he had his cute little kid with him, this little baby girl. She was in the ADR session with him, and he was having to do the screams of his death moment, and every time he did it, I was like, “Go harder. Make itreallyharrowing, like the most horrific, painful, pleading for your life.” And he kept doing more, and we were going, “This girl’s going to need therapy for the rest of her life. Just watching, like, ‘Who is this man? He’s just crying like a baby. He’s worse than me!'” [Laughs]
As someone who’s been aJurassiclover for as long as I can remember, that sounds like a wonderful foundational family moment to me.
Designing Dinosaurs on a Tight Schedule for ‘Rebirth’
If the concept artists didn’t submit “out there” ideas for new dinos, they weren’t doing the job right.
I’ll stick with the D-Rex a little more here. Can you tell us what it’s made up of? I know the base of it is the T-Rex genome, but what else do you envision being in it?
EDWARDS: I thought it was really an opportunity for Frank to have a cameo in the film, so we scanned Frank’s face. The scanner wasn’t working properly, and… No, I’m joking. Basically, you took everything in a melting pot. It’s really hard to come up with a monster idea. We put in a little bit of the Rancor from Star Wars. Don’t tell people who work on Star Wars.
MARSHALL: Don’t tell Kathy [Kennedy].
EDWARDS: Then we put in a little bit of H.R. Geiger’s alien for good measure. There was a little bit of, obviously, the T-Rex. Then, if you imagine we were all dinosaurs for a second, and someone made a movie about humans, they would go, “Oh, it’s a human.” That’s the end of the conversation. You’d be like, “Well, which human? What kind? Like, Clint Eastwood? What is it?” So, basically, the animators go, “Well, who would it be if it was a character?” I ended up saying, “Okay, maybe go rewatch David Lynch’sThe Elephant Man.” It’s the idea of something that’s a little bit suffering, didn’t want to be in this situation, and I like that. It’s in there, certainly, hopefully,but there’s this little bit of empathy you have for it. You wanted to feel slightly sorry for it.
Apparently, it’s the sound designer’s mother-in-law’s dog that struggles to breathe. That’s what I heard. There’s another sad story if you want it. His cat got attacked by another cat and crushed its windpipe. The cat recovered and was perfectly happy and recovered, but breathes in a very strange way, and he recorded his cat, who’s now passed away — I’m sorry — and used the audio for Aquilops. So, the little sniffles and the [snorts] is his cat that had a crushing windpipe.
MARSHALL: The sound designers are very strange people.
I’ll ask a question about Dolores that has been weighing on my mind. The movie makes a point to say that the dinosaurs can only really survive near the equator. Where is Dolores going, and will she be okay?
MARSHALL: I’m calling David Koepp. They’re on their way somewhere. Dolores is going to be okay. Definitely.
I can sleep easy now.
EDWARDS: I had a little theory when we were filming it because you kind of get into the logic and the maths of how did Dolores get from here to there?
MARSHALL: Don’t tell them.
EDWARDS: And so we started to go, “What if it’s not the same animal?” What if every time she just sees an aquilop, she’s like, “Dolores!” And it’s a totally different animal that’s like, “Who the fuck is this?”
MARSHALL: And they all like licorice.
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I want to go back to some of the dino designs in this because I was reading that you got together a group of concept artists, and you basically said to them, “Just go wild. Take it to an 11, and swing big.” Can you recall the wildest concept art that you saw for a potential dino in the movie?
EDWARDS: Actually, yeah, that’s all coming back now. So, you start a film like this: Normally, you have two and a half years. We had a year and a quarter. You arrive at Universal, your first day on the job kind of thing in the office, and then you’ve got your first meeting. It’s like, “Oh, in a couple of days, Mattel, the toy company, is coming.” You’re like, “Why?” They’re like, “They want to see the dinosaurs so they can design the toys.” You go, “But we haven’t designed anything.” They’re like, “Yeah, it’s okay. But if they don’t build the factories now, they’re not going to be ready in a year for the movie’s release. So they have to start now.” And you go, “But we haven’t got a thing! I’ve just walked in the building. I don’t…” And they’re like, “Look, they’re coming anyway. Okay? So just get your act together.”
MARSHALL: Oh, we had to present to them, right? I forgot about that. Complete bullshit.
EDWARDS: What happened was I’ve had the great privilege of working with a lot of great concept artists around the world, and we basically did this. The bat signal went up, and it was like, “Please.” They were nice enough to give us some money, and we were like, “We’re going to pay you all. You’re going to do this crazy Zoom, and I’m going to brief you about every single dinosaur. You guys are going to go wild.If you don’t send me some stuff that I instantly reject because it’s too fucking out there, then you’ve failed at your job.” Then we just sat, and for a few hours, just went through every single dinosaur and what it could and couldn’t be, showing references, and all sorts of things. Then, it was within a day or two, we could fill a room with illustrations and stuff. It happened really, really quickly.
MARSHALL: For example, the Mutadon we knew had to fly, so we could give it wings and a shape and everything. It was refined over the next couple of months until they started doing their models and things. But yeah, we hit the ground running in every aspect of the movie.
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Gareth Edwards Reveals Easter Eggs To Keep an Eye Out For
Is there such a thing as too many call-backs and references?
There are so many echoes to the original movie that are baked into your scenes. Can you walk us through what it’s like finding the sweet spot in terms of adding an echo, or adding an Easter egg, but also making sure that it plays naturally in this story?
EDWARDS: I took in everything I love about Spielberg films, and Frank goes, “Take it out.” And then we settle in the middle somewhere.
MARSHALL: Yeah, that’s how it worked. “No, we can’t do that. Can’t do that.” Actually, I’m surprised because there are so many left that I missed!
Did you have a particular favorite scene from the original movie that you were most excited to get to tap into here?
EDWARDS: The one I fought for a little bit was, basically, you have a movie where it’s a tropical island with dinosaurs on it. If that’s all you have visually, it’s like we went back in time to when they existed. The great thing aboutJurassicis it’s not that. They came toourtime. So, inJurassic Park, something that really spouts that out is the kitchen scene, right? Because you sit and watch that as a kid, and you go, “That’s like the kitchen at school!” You know what I mean? Like, “That’s where I live.” So, I was trying to find some location that would fit within the script that was a bit like if you could go, “That’s like down my street.”
They had vehicles, and so I thought, “A gas station.” So, you start a gas station, and suddenly you’ve got the interior. You’re going to have a bit of a predatory kind of tension in there, and then they built these fridges like you get in gas stations. I was looking at them, thinking, “Well, you could hide in one of those.” Then, you start to go, “Oh, they flicker on and off. That’s a good gag. Oh, maybe only the girl could fit. Maybe she covers the light. Oh, and then it would come after her and it would flicker on!” You start getting excited. Then you go, “Oh, wait a minute, that’s like the kitchen scene inJurassic.” Then you think, “Oh, fuck it. Let’s just do it anyway.” Because it’s kind of a nod. It’s kind of a reflection of that movie.
Then, when we were shooting it, David Koepp was on set, and Frank, and they came up and were like, “You should shoot a version where you may cut this bit out if you need to.” I was so deflated. I did shoot a version where we could cut it out, and we did cut a version with it out. There was very little cut out of this film. It’s pretty much all in there. It’s very difficult for the deleted scenes. There are about two, and they last about two minutes. But that one was out for a while.I remember just trying to look sad around Frank every time I saw him, and then eventually they were like, “Go on, put it back in.”
MARSHALL: Timing is everything. I just had to wait for the right time that I knew we could put it back in the movie and it would work, because we had taken out other things that were callback.
It’s very effective. Another example that love is the raft scene when Bella’s underneath. That immediately takes me back to the kids in the car and also the gyrosphere.
I want to dig intothat raft scenea little more because, for anyone out there who loves the book, we’ve been waiting a long time to see that scene on screen. What kind of pressure do you feel adapting that highly anticipated scene from the book to screen?
MARSHALL: I’ll say that this was David Koepp’s idea, and he said to Steven, “Remember that scene that we couldn’t get in the first movie? Let’s try and put it in this one.” And it worked perfectly for the family. Then Gareth shot the shit out of it. There we were in Thailand, and that’s a real lake, and there’s a dock there, and the mountains are all around, and we had the dead dinosaur there. He was actually on the set. He didn’t really smell, but he looked good.What I love about working with Gareth is he sees in his mind where these things that aren’t there are. I can’t do that. I’m from the old school. I don’t see how these things connect, but you’re able to see this, and you knew how to stage and shoot this scene that’s unbelievable. A lot of us have dogs. How many times have you seen your dog just roll over and go back to sleep? That was the idea.
There are a lot of good naps for dinosaurs in this movie. Also, the Spinosaurus, when it gets up in the background from lying on the beach.
I want to go back to the gas station quickly because I was reading that that store is filled with InGen products, so it was making me wonder, are there any particular Easter eggs on that set that you really appreciated?
EDWARDS: Everywhere. Whenever you just stood around waiting for something to happen, you could just reach to your left and pull something. I’d do it, and it would be like, “Oh look, a little badge of Devil’s Tower fromClose Encounters [of the Third Kind].” And you’d pull it again and go, “Oh look, a magazine aboutBack to the Future.” It was people like James Klein and his team, who just love these movies too, trying to sneak stuff past Frank and getting away with it. The whole movie to me is a love letter to his films and what you guys did back then.
I think that’s probably the difference. I knowthere’s a very fine line between plagiarism and homage. You’ve got to be careful. These people are very humble, and they don’t want to repeat anything, but probably yourself, David Koepp, and Steven are a unique trio in that you’re the only people in the whole world that feel that way. The rest of the world loves your movies and enjoys revisiting them. I felt like I was one of those people. So, I felt, and maybe I’m wrong — come on, cheer now and tell me right — is it good to have a little bit of reference to these movies?
Is there aCongoreference anywhere?
MARSHALL: I hope not.
I have a big place in my heart for that one!
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Another thing I was really curious about is the temple that you added. I know it was a reference toTemple of Doom, but I was wondering if you created any backstory for something like that, like why that was there, and why that would add an important layer to the story other than just being a reference to a beloved film.
EDWARDS: It’s kind of my fault. The truth is, in those meetings where I went, “I’d like to do this, this, this and this and this.” One of the things on the top of the list was, I like the idea that it starts in the jungle and there’s a tribe, like a remote Amazon tribe, that has not been discovered kind of thing. They’re basically looking nervously at something, and there’s movement in the trees, and then the trees start to collapse, and basically it’s a big massive digger bulldozing the rainforest. They’re making or finishing the lab. It was a way in where you think it’s going to be a dinosaur, and it wasn’t. Because in my mind there was this tribe, I started to think, “You could then probably have little bits of civilization of theirs throughout the island,” and when you’re doing anything in Central America, by default, it has to be sort of Inca-based. Once you get into Inca, you’re suddenly sat there going, “Hang on, this looks likeRaiders of the Lost Ark.Uh oh, Frank’s our producer.” So, we started building this temple for the nest. It was written as just a nest on the side of the cliff, but I’m not a good enough director to make that exciting, so I was like, “I need a bit more of a playground to play with.” So, I wanted a carving inside of a cliff edge like you see, but thenit did start to very much look like a particular movie.You walked on set and I remember you had a comment.
MARSHALL: I don’t remember. I had a lot of comments.
EDWARDS: I didn’t know if it was a positive or a negative comment.
MARSHALL: That’s right. It was almost too much. “I’m not sure we can do this.” But it actually works in the movie. However, we then had to tie it together with the characters on the top who had to have a way to get down to the bottom after Johnny Bailey fell. There are all these things where you start going, “Well, how did they get to the bottom?” Then we had to create this, and then we had to create a moment when something went in that little stairway that went down and they could get away. So it just compounded itself, but that’s why we do what we do.We work together, and we solve these problems. We solve these story problems before they become a problem in the cut.
Is There a Future for the Franchise?
The gates were left wide open, according to Marshall.
I’ve gotta end with the greediest question of all, because everyone here is seeing this movie early. It hasn’t even come out yet, but I needJurassicmovies in my life forever and ever and ever. Is there an itch to make another one, and if so, are we talking another trilogy or perhaps another standalone story?
MARSHALL: All I’ll say to that is, I think we left the door quite open.
There’s only one follow-up question to that. Gareth, you’ve done three franchise movies at this point, and you haven’t returned to the other franchises. Are you itching to do anotherJurassic?
EDWARDS: Are these new carpets? [Laughs] I’ve been getting this question a little bit this week. As a fan, there are things I wanna see. Like, you’re probably all sitting there thinking, “You know what’d be great? If they did this. Oh, you know what would be really cool?” And as a fan, I’ve got those same desires.I want these films to keep going, and there are things I wanna see personally.As a filmmaker, I won the lottery getting to do this movie, and so I’m very happy where I am. I’ve been saying to everyone, and it’s 100% true, we’ve not had a single conversation about another film at all. I don’t know if it’s superstition or what, but I’ve not done it, Frank’s not done it, David’s not done it, the studio’s not done it. And I’m gonna keep it that way tonight if that’s alright. We’ll just see how the world reacts when it comes out.
I respect that. I will say though, whether it’s continuing with this franchise or perhaps a completely different one, any franchise is lucky to have you at the helm. Huge congratulations to you both onJurassic World Rebirth!
