Jurassic World 4 Coming from Jurassic Park Screenwriter
The dinosaurs are returning, and so is their original screenwriter. A Hollywood Reporter exclusive reveals that the next Jurassic World film is in development, and it is being written by David Koepp, who also wrote the original Jurassic Park and its first sequel (which was already one too many), The Lost World: Jurassic Park. This will be the fourth Jurassic World movie, following Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Jurassic World: Dominion; it will be the seventh Jurassic Park film. Little is known about Jurassic World: The Raptors Take Manhattan (just guessing), but it appears to have been in the works for a while, with Koepp’s script almost done and “in a well-liked shape” and rumors of a 2025 release. There’s no director yet, which presumably means Colin Trevorrow will not be back, and former stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are not expected to return either.
At this point, why not? It’s not like they can ruin Jurassic Park any more; they’ve stretched the premise of that one amazing movie so far that it’s just another conveyor-belt franchise now. To be fair, I didn’t see Jurassic World: Dominion, so it’s possible the sixth time was the charm and I missed out on a masterpiece, but I suspect not. That they’re soft-rebooting the series yet again speaks to their hopes for longevity; maybe that’s the pattern, and every three films will start a new era of the franchise with new leads. It took them two sequels to annihilate Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler’s character arcs from Jurassic Park, so I guess it doesn’t matter who the leads are anymore. Now, it’s just a matter of how zany they can get with the dinosaurs. Eventually, they’ll go into full Godzilla mode and have the dinos become sci-fi monsters that shoot lasers from their mouths or whatever they come up with. And David Koepp’s involvement does nothing for me; he wrote or co-wrote some great stuff (Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way, Toy Soldiers), some good stuff (Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible, The Shadow), some okay stuff (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Secret Window, Snake Eyes), and some bad stuff (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2017’s The Mummy), so the results of his work are fairly unpredictable. But it’s hard to care anymore; the Jurassic Park movies are just rich people playing with expensive toys now, so let them do whatever they want.
