Scarlett Johansson is in talks to star in the newest movie in the Jurassic World franchise as it gears up for a 2025 release date.
Two years after the last film in the acclaimed dinosaur franchise – Jurassic World: Dominion – was savaged by critics and was intended to bring the curtain down on the franchise, Universal Pictures is developing a new film with David Koepp, 60, writing the new screenplay and Gareth Edwards, 48, directing.
Oscar nominee Johansson, 39, is tipped to lead the film reports THR, marking her return to move franchises after starring as Black Widow in Marvel films.
Universal is said to be ‘moving quickly’ on the film, which has a July 2, 2025, release date.
Koepp adapted the original 1993 film Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park from Michael Crichton’s bestselling novels.
However he did not return for 2001’s Jurassic Park III or new franchise films Jurassic World (2015), Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Dominion (2022).
The Hollywood Reporter reveals the film’s script is in a ‘well liked shape’ and the studio is speculating it may have a 2025 release date.
Jurassic World trilogy producer Frank Marshall will produce once again alongside Patrick Crowley.
Jurassic Park and The Lost World director Steven Spielberg will executive produce via his Amblin Entertainment banner.
Sources tell the publication the film will launch a ‘new Jurassic era’ with a new storyline.
The original Jurassic Park movies featured Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum while the Jurassic World trilogy starred Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
Movie critics slammed Dominion saying it was too bloated with characters and action sequences that it forgets about the dinosaurs which made it a hit.
Dominion followed the events of the past 30 years – with dinosaurs now roaming free around the world as a biotechnology firm unleashes genetically-altered locusts that destroy the planet’s crops.
It brought the original stars of Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park film – Dern, Neill and Goldblum – to investigate the dying plants, as newer stars Pratt and Dallas Howard travel around the world to save 14-year-old Maisie Lockwood – a genetic clone of a scientist whose DNA was altered to eliminate cancer.
Of course, all the stars come together at some point in the film, to fight biotechnology giant BioSyn, led by the Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos like Dr. Lewis Dodgson, who promised to keep the world’s dinosaurs safe at his multibillion dollar camp.
‘It’s not so much a movie as an extinction-level event for the franchise,’ writes David Fear for Rolling Stone, ‘one in which the last remaining bits of good will and investment in this particular intellectual property are snuffed out, like so many unlucky Stegosauruses.’
As Justin Chang writes for the Los Angeles Times: ‘You’ll spend much of the movie’s 147-minute running time watching seven or eight co-protagonists running around another mad scientist’s dinosaur farm, where bioethical boundaries are once again crossed and security measures are once again doomed to fail.’
Stephanie Zacharek also described for Time Magazine how ‘there’s so much plot, so many characters, so much damn Chris Pratt, that the dinosaurs end up taking a backseat’ and are ‘the forlorn underdogs of their own film,’ while Johnny Oleksinski writes for the New York Post that the ‘awful movie is longer than the Cretaceous Period.’
In the end, he writes: ‘The sound you hear at the movie theater during Dominion’ is not the shocked gasps of the original, classic Jurassic Park – it’s mocking giggles,’ while Zacharek described the sound as ‘millions of disgruntled, long-dead dinosaurs rolling in their fossilized graves.’
Jurassic Park was Hollywood’s highest-grossing film of all upon its 1993 release
It ran in theatres for almost 500 days and grossed a total of $912million worldwide, captivated audiences around the globe and launched the modern blockbuster franchise.
