Two years after our incredible chat for The Creator, I was able to reconnect with director Gareth Edwards, this time to talk about the biggest blockbuster of his career: Jurassic World Rebirth.
Tasked with ushering in a new era of dinosaur films, he walked me through the roller-coaster build of that show-stopping T-Rex river chase sequence, the happy (and terrifying) discovery of Spielberg’s abandoned version, and why ignorance was bliss until the edit bay. We also dug into the decision to shoot on 35mm with vintage Panavision glass — chasing that early ’90s vibe — and how practical animatronics anchor the spectacle in something tactile.
He also tells me about introducing the new cast of Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey and balancing their mission with the Delgado family storyline that gives the film some added heart.
Watch our full chat below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: The T-Rex river chase is already being called one of the best action scenes in the franchise — what was the hardest part of bringing that sequence to life?
GARETH: I mean, thankfully, I had no idea that Spielberg had tried to do it, or at least started the process of putting it in the original Jurassic Park. I read the book when I was 16 because I knew Jurassic Park was coming out and so I must have forgotten it in thirty-two years, because when I read the screenplay for this, it had the same sequence, and I've just felt correct for, oh, this is kind of worth the price of the ticket alone, just for this scene. And then, when we were in edit, you know, in post, we managed to escape for our first time out of the edit in like weeks, we went down the road when the shops were still open, and my editor, Jabez Olssen, bought a making of Jurassic Park book, and he suddenly went, hang on, have you seen this? And we looked, and there were storyboards of Steven Spielberg's version of the raft sequence. And, I had no idea, and I'm glad I didn't know, because it would have been too intimidating knowing that Steven had taken a swipe at this and then given up. Obviously, back then, doing water was virtually impossible, really, you know, to do even a T Rex was a miracle. And so, it was just something that David Koepp and Steven both wanted to put in the movie, and it's a bit of a gift as a director, for Steven Spielberg to go, hey, we tried to do this, but we couldn't do it back then, so here you go, you have a crack at it. It's kind of a film director's dream and nightmare combined, really.
ROHAN: You shot on 35mm film and used practical animatronics — what did those choices add to the audience experience in Jurassic World Rebirth?
GARETH: Yeah, my silly little conversation with the crew early on was I wanted it to feel like Universal Studios had gone into their vaults and dusted off an old reel of film, and it said, Jurassic World Rebirth, and it was as if it was a movie made in the early ‘90s. And, you know, obviously Jurassic Park came out it then, so they decided not to release it, and they decided to release it in 2025, I wanted it to have that kind of feel, that nostalgic kind of film language, so we shot it on 35mm. We used Panavision cameras and old Panavision lenses that were the same ones that all those movies I grew up loving were shot on, because, to me, that's the ideal cinematic look that I've always been chasing my whole career.
ROHAN: Watching with audiences, what moment have you seen get the biggest reaction?
GARETH: Yeah, as a director, you think you know when the audience is gonna have a reaction, and it's always surprising when you watch it for the first time with a proper audience, and it always takes you by surprise the things they respond to, and my favorite memory is - the first time we ever showed it to the composer of the movie, Alexandre Desplat, I ended up sitting next to him, it was totally random at this sort of friends and family screening where people tell you what they think and during the film, I just noticed more and more he just kept leaning forward like this, until he was fully forward towards the end, and I was very proud that we had that effect on him. And at the end, when the credits rolled, he just turned around to me and went, I've got to go home and start composing. Like, I think it lit a fire under him, and so, yeah, just watching everybody, anyone who sits and leans forwards is, as a filmmaker, like, yes, because there's definitely a moment in this movie where it feels like the roller coaster barrier comes down and clicks, and off it goes, and then, it sort of doesn't really stop till the end, and so, yeah, it's hard to have a favorite moment, it's like having a favorite child. I kind of was trying to make everything as good as each other, and so, hopefully there's a lot to like. I don't know. Let's see.
ROHAN: After six films with legacy characters, you’re introducing a brand-new ensemble. What unique challenge did that present, and how did you make each role feel distinct?
GARETH: I think the biggest challenge is to make sure the characters don't really overlap each other and they're not doing the same thing. I think our great reference, I know it was for David Koepp, the writer, who wrote the original Jurassic Park, was the triangle of Jaws and how those three characters on the boat all intersected nicely, but had this conflict between them all, so we were just trying to basically - if you have just one character, they got to be all things to all people, if you have two, they've got to be half and half, and when you've got a triangle, like we had, you know, you've got to divide it even more. And David did a great job. I felt, when I was reading that screenplay, that was one of the things that really jumped out to me, even on the page, was how sort of specific everybody was and you understood what they were trying to do, and cared about them and enjoyed hanging out with them. One of the sort of surprises of the film, I think, that's maybe not shouted about as much in the marketing is this family that’s also shipwrecked on the island with these experts and I feel like, you know, in a movie, there's normally, like an A-storyline and then, a B-storyline that intercuts with it. And I feel like, you know, the family is also an A-storyline, and every time it cuts from one storyline back to the other, you kind of go, oh yeah, great, I like these guys. I want to see what's going on with them and then, it cuts back. Oh yeah, great. And so, I was really proud of the fact that everybody, we had about ten cast members, you know, at various times on this film, but everybody had their moment. I liked everyone, and the actors themselves as well were great to hang out with. And, yeah, I was very lucky.
A new era is born. This summer, three years after the Jurassic World trilogy concluded with each film surpassing $1 billion at the global box office, the enduring Jurassic series evolves in an ingenious new direction with Jurassic World Rebirth.
Anchored by iconic action superstar Scarlett Johansson, Emmy and SAG nominee Jonathan Bailey and two-time Oscar® winner Mahershala Ali, this action-packed new chapter sees an extraction team race to the most dangerous place on Earth, an island research facility for the original Jurassic Park, inhabited by the worst of the worst that were left behind.
Also starring acclaimed international stars Rupert Friend and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, the film is directed by dynamic visualist Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) from a script by original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp.
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.
Academy Award® nominee 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.