Jurassic World Rebirth roars into theaters this July

The raptors are back with a host of ravenous friends in the official trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth, the fourth installment in the Jurassic World series and seventh film overall in the franchise spawned by 1993’s Jurassic Park.

(Some spoilers for Jurassic World Dominion below.)

The franchise has been lumbering along for over 20 years now with mixed success, but Jurassic World Dominion (2022) at least gave Universal a bona fide box office hit to counter all the negative reviews, grossing just over $1 billion worldwide. (It has a mere 29 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.) That film ended with dinosaurs and humans figuring out how to co-exist, the establishment of a dino sanctuary by the United Nations, and the evil corporation BioSyn in disgrace.

This time around, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali step into the leading roles since the film is meant to be a fresh start for the franchise—although it does feature a return to the original research facility. Gareth Edwards—who directed 2014’s Godzilla—signed on to direct a script penned by David Koepp, who wrote the scripts for Jurassic Park and The Lost World (1997). (Koepp also directed 1999’s Stir of Echoes, one of my longtime faves.)

Per the official premise:

Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea, and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.

Johansson plays skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett, contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park. There, in a terrain populated by dinosaurs of vastly different species, they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that has been hidden from the world for decades.

The cast also includes Rupert Friend as pharmaceutical rep Martin Krebs; Jonathan Bailey as paleontologist Henry Loomis; Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Reuben Delgado, whose family is shipwrecked; Luna Blaise as Reuben’s older daughter; David Iacano as Reuben’s son; Audrina Miranda as Reuben’s younger daughter; and Bechir Sylvain as one of Zora’s team members. Ed Skrein and Philippine Velge will also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.