- calendar_today August 20, 2025
Mahershala Ali Joins Jurassic World in Franchise Reboot
Universal Pictures has shared the final trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth in advance of the upcoming sequel’s Fourth of July weekend theatrical release. Jurassic World Rebirth will open in theaters on July 2, 2025, starring Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali. It’s a reset of sorts for the Jurassic World series, but the studio and director have also promised fans some callbacks to the original Jurassic Park, including returning to the source’s tropical island home. The plot is also anchored in high-concept science, as Rebirth’s world seeks a groundbreaking anti-aging drug that could be hidden within dinosaur DNA.
Jurassic World Rebirth is the fourth Jurassic World entry, and the seventh film overall in the Jurassic Park film series, which started with Steven Spielberg’s 1993 movie. Jurassic World Rebirth will be directed by Gareth Edwards, who previously directed the 2014 Godzilla reboot. The screenplay is by David Koepp, the screenwriter who wrote both the original Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World (1997), and is also returning to the franchise after a 25-year absence.
Official Synopsis
The official synopsis, per a press release: “Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the world’s ecosystems can no longer support the dinosaurs, and their population has been driven into shrinking equatorial havens that replicate their prehistoric environments. Nestled within one of these tropical biospheres are the three largest dinosaurs of land, sea, and sky. Hidden within each of these creatures is the genetic key that their creators have long believed to be the key to creating a miracle, life-saving drug. Scarlett Johansson stars as Zora Bennett, a covert ops specialist handpicked to lead a team on a top-secret mission to extract the genetic code. Their mission is complicated when they intersect with a civilian boating family who are in the middle of a relaxing family vacation. When their excursion turns into a deadly nighttime encounter with a marine dinosaur, the survivors must take shelter on a long-abandoned island. Unknown to them, the island was once a secret Jurassic Park research site, and the secrets they find on the island may be darker and more dangerous than the dinosaurs.
Cast and Crew
In addition to Johansson and Ali, the cast of Jurassic World Rebirth includes Rupert Friend as Martin Krebs, a pharmaceutical company representative with unclear motives; Jonathan Bailey as paleontologist Henry Loomis; and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Reuben Delgado, the father of the shipwrecked family. Delgado’s children are played by Luna Blaise, David Iacano, and Audrina Miranda, while Bechir Sylvain plays a member of Bennett’s mission team. Ed Skrein and Philippine Velge have also been confirmed in unannounced roles.
The final trailer mostly reuses footage from the earlier trailer from February, using some familiar scenes and music as a springboard to reemphasize the film’s high concept and scope. The new trailer opens on a somewhat spoiler-y sequence, with a lab technician working in a hazmat suit as he is left behind by an extraction team in a cage with an adult T-Rex. He screams for help as the camera pans up and away, with little hope he’ll make it. The trailer then segues into action, with CGI destruction, prehistoric death and destruction, more impending dinosaur attacks, and the promise of dino drama. A particularly exciting reveal is one of the film’s biggest set pieces so far: an attempted heist of a pterosaur egg, or possibly eggs, in a nesting scene. The trailer’s dialogue calls out Quetzalcoatlus northropi as “a flying carnivore the size of an F-16.” Of course, Jurassic fans know raptors when they see them, so the filmmakers don’t try too hard to hide familiar creatures. In fact, in addition to rehashing some familiar monsters, they also share a glimpse of the Jurassic Park classic, the mosasaur, an ancient aquatic reptile.
From the trailer, it appears that while the Jurassic Park research island has been used as a biosphere since the 1993 disaster, and these biospheres have shifted in location and environment since then, this island specifically was intentionally populated by “the worst of the worst”—the more volatile and dangerous dinosaurs that the creators wanted to dispose of. The trailer hints that some of these dangers could be human-made, too.
