Director Gareth Edwards has revealed that Jurassic World: Rebirth draws major visual inspiration from Ridley Scott’s 2005 historical epic Kingdom of Heaven.
In the upcoming installment of the Jurassic franchise, Edwards looked to the work of acclaimed cinematographer John Mathieson to shape the visual tone of the film. “John Mathieson was the director of photography and the more and more I looked at it, the more I was like, ‘This is perfection. There’s not a bad frame in this movie,’” Edwards told SFX Magazine.
The filmmaker, known for Rogue One and Godzilla, added, “I’ve always had this love for his [Ridley Scott’s] work. When you start a film like this, you have a group of names you’d like to work with, and the studio have a group of names they would trust.”
To bring his vision to life, Edwards brought back VFX supervisor David Vickery, who previously worked on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Dominion. “He’s just brilliant and kind of like the world’s best person at dinosaurs. But he was sort of done with doing dinosaur films. He didn’t want to do another one,” the director noted.
Interestingly, Edwards initially approached the project with hesitation. “I read this screenplay wanting to hate it because I just wanted to have a break,” he admitted in another conversation with SFX Magazine, as cited by GamesRadar+. “I was all ready for the polite, ‘No.’ Like, ‘Oh, it was really good, but I just want to do my own thing. Thank you for considering me.’”
However, by the time he finished reading, his mind changed. “I got to the end of the screenplay and was like, ‘It’s good. Damn it.’ All the characters really popped out. It was just one of those things where it was like, ‘I can’t not do this.’ Also, it was all going to be done in about a year. It was just like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to be able to do anything but this.’ But it was an opportunity of a lifetime, to some extent. I dove in, really. We’re only just coming up for air.”
Jurassic World: Rebirth, set five years after the events of Dominion, features Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett, Jonathan Bailey as Dr. Henry Loomis, Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid, and Rupert Friend as Martin Krebs.
The story follows Zora and her team as they seek to retrieve DNA from the three largest known dinosaurs to develop a revolutionary life-saving drug. Their mission takes a turn when they encounter a stranded family on a mysterious island harboring a long-hidden secret.
With David Koepp penning the script, and box office projections estimating a strong opening between $120–125 million in the U.S., the film is poised to mark a new era for the Jurassic saga.
Jurassic World Rebirth is set to release in theaters on July 2.