ROGUE ONE Director Gareth Edwards Set To Direct New JURASSIC WORLD Movie
Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment have found a new director to take on their new Jurassic World movie, and that director is Rogue One and The Creator director Gareth Edwards. David Leitch was originally attached to direct and he and the studios ended up parting ways.
Steven Spielberg is a producer on the film and original Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp is writing the script for the movie, which will be “a completely fresh take” on the franchise. And none of the original actors from Jurassic Park or Jurassic World will return for the new movie.
Edwards spent a good amount of time playing in the sandboxes of big franchises like Star Wars and Godzilla. Those films took a toll on him, though, and after making Rogue One he took a six to seven year break from making movies before he made The Creator. He previously talked about that, saying:
"I needed to get off the merry-go-round, do you know what I mean? In Hollywood, you can get stuck on the hamster wheel, or whatever analogy you want to use. I just wanted to get off and have a break to take some time thinking about the next thing."
He went on to explain that even though he was making these big-budget franchise Hollywood movies, he realized that more money didn’t necessarily give him freedom. He said:
"I got to make a very low-budget science fiction film with Monsters, and I realized there were some serious advantages to having no money. It was kind of a shock to have all the money you could ever want, and still be limited. I felt like if I could somehow get that big bag of cash and send it back in time to me when I was making Monsters, the possibilities would have been infinite. And so, in a weird way, I was trying to find that kind of scenario again. I was as much interested in the process of how to make the film as I was the idea."
When previously asked if he would jump back into be studio films, which he is doing now, Edwards said it all depends on him having a comfortable amount of creative freedom:
"I like franchises, obviously, or else I wouldn't have done two of them. So there are things that I would still love to do in that arena," Edwards explained. He quickly added the caveat that even if working for a big studio, he'd still want to use the practical and immersive world-building approaches he did to make The Creator.
Edwards went on to talk about not wanting to get caught in the Hollywood “factory,” and shared what his best-case scenario would be with the franchise:
"If I got to do them, I only want to do them if I can use this methodology and bring this stamp to it. Because you go into a certain factory, it's going to turn out all the other things in the factory. So, it's like trying to escape the factory and just do it this way. If someone was willing to go, 'Okay, here's the IP. Here's the franchise, but go off and do it how you do things.' That would be probably one of the best-case scenarios, I reckon."
I guess Edwards got the creative freedom he was asking for. Or, he got a dump truck full of money that he just couldn’t say no to.
Jurassic World is set to hit theaters on July 2, 2025. What do you think about Edwards taking on this new Jurassic World film?
Source: Deadline