Jurassic World: Rebirth Sequel Gets Divisive Director Update & Fans Are Shocked: “Two Steps Back for Both Parties”

Gareth Edwards doesn’t do sequels. The director is known primarily for big-budget franchise movies — Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla, and Jurassic World: Rebirth — but they seem to burn him out to the point of not wanting to follow them up. It’s pretty clear that he has the most fun on more personal movies that look a lot more expensive than they are, like Monsters and The Creator. However, neither was a major commercial hit, and the large IPs carry bigger paychecks, for guys who can handle the work. In August, we learned he won’t be doing another Jurassic World movie due to unspecified creative issues.

Universal’s not going to abandon the massive Jurassic franchise that’s likely to keep making money as long as kids still love dinosaurs, so a new director will be needed, and it sounds like they’re narrowing down the search. The individual at the top of their latest list is certainly qualified, but perhaps a divisive choice for fans who think he’s been doing just fine making more personal films.

J.A. Bayona May Be Coming Back

According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit posting on X, J.A. Bayona, director of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, is Universal’s number-one choice to continue the story begun in Jurassic World: Rebirth. Fallen Kingdom is generally the best regarded film in the Jurassic World era of the franchise, with its apocalyptic island destruction intro finally leading to a Resident Evil/Dino Crisis-style, dinosaurs-in-a-secret-mansion climax. It also introduced a subplot about human cloning that the franchise didn’t heavily pursue thereafter. For fans of the Jurassic movies, this ought to be good news. Fans of Bayona, however, aren’t as thrilled, making comments like, “this would be two steps back for both parties.”

Bayona’s more personal movies include the tsunami disaster film The Impossible, and the plane crash movie Society of the Snow, which he followed with a documentary series about the actual survivors. He first came to Hollywood’s attention with the Guilllermo del Toro-produced horror movie The Orphanage, and directed two episodes of Penny Dreadful. It would be wrong to imagine him as some kind of anti-franchise purist, however; he also directed two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is working in a sandbox every bit as large and protected as Jurassic World. He also directed A Monster Calls, which encompassed both grief and monsters. Emotion and disaster, generally, is a combination he likes to work with.

Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali are expected to return to the sequel, as freelance covert operatives with deadly skills. Anne Hathaway has said she wants to join, and Universal would probably be wise to let her — Catwoman and not-quite-Blade and Black Widow versus dinosaurs sounds like a decent start. Bayona currently has two projects in development — an untitled sci-fi movie, and an adaptation of a short story collection by Manuel Chaves Nogales entitled A sangre y fuego. Both are in early stages, and could be pushed aside if this larger offer comes through. As of now, there’s no reason to believe he’ll turn it down.

Do you want to see the Fallen Kingdom director run with dinosaurs again, or can he do better? Stomp down into the discussion below!

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