The hunt for the director of the next Jurassic World movie has begun. With Gareth Edwards, who helmed 2025’s Jurassic World Rebirth, having departed the project over creative differences, Universal is looking for an experienced dinosaur wrangler to ride herd over one of its biggest franchises. At the top of their list is a veteran helmer with significant prehistoric experience.

Jurassic World Rebirth served as a soft reboot for the franchise; the dinosaurs that threatened to overrun the world after 2021’s Jurassic World: Dominion had largely died off, and were now limited to a few dino-habitable zones near the equator. The film introduced a new cast of characters, including extraction expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), field leader Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), and paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), who were sent to find some dino-DNA for pharmaceutical use, but instead stumbled across an InGen test bed for rejected dino-mutants. Johansson, Ali, and Bailey are all expected to return for the sequel, while screenwriter David Koepp, who also penned the original Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World, is already at work on the screenplay. Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall, who have produced every Jurassic movie to date, will return as well.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, J.A. Bayona is the frontrunner to direct the new Jurassic film; however, he is not yet in formal talks to helm the movie. If he signs on, he’ll be a Jurassic two-timer; he previously directed 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Bayona‘s most recent film was the 2023 survival drama Society of the Snow. More recently, he directed the first two episodes of Prime Video’s blockbuster fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

What Happens in ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’?

Volcanic eruptions destroy the Costa Rican island of Isla Nublar, which had housed Jurassic Park and later Jurassic World, threatening its dinosaur population. Onetime Jurassic World staffers Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) attempt to save some, only to learn that they were only pawns in a larger game. Various sinister players actually plan to auction the dinosaurs off to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, one of the dinosaurs on the block is an Indoraptor, a mutated and weaponized super-predator that might be the most dangerous creature on the planet…

A sequel to Jurassic World Rebirth is in development. 

via Collider