Universal’s Jurassic World 5 Plan Is Surprising After Rebirth (but Might Be for the Best)

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Three years after Jurassic World Dominion ended the Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard-led reboot trilogy, this was intended to be another fresh start for the dinosaur franchise. And yet, despite being a success, there’s been little word on another movie. There were reports late last year of Jurassic World 5 looking to bring back Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey, but nothing close to official from Universal, which is quite surprising given it’s one of the studio’s prize franchises, and was a box office hit.

Will Jurassic World 5 Happen?

Jurassic World Rebirth‘s box office didn’t hit $1 billion, making it the first movie since the franchise was brought back to life in 2015 to fail to hit that marker. But times have changed, and moviegoing habits with them: in a sense, hitting upwards of $800-850m isn’t dissimilar to what hitting that $1bn milestone used to be. Also, Rebirth was made on a significantly lower budget than previous Jurassic World films, at around $180m. That gave it a higher margin for profitability anyway, which it clearly smashed past.

There is obviously a strong financial reason for Universal to make Jurassic World 5, which is often all that matters when it comes to IP. Jurassic World was originally envisaged as a trilogy, and the third movie was confirmed before the second had released, which adds to the surprise that another with Rebirth‘s cast hasn’t been announced. There were recently rumors regarding the movie being titled Jurassic World: Liberation, with internet scuttlebutt that Universal had purchased a domain with that name, but such claims turned out to be false.

Of course, Universal probably is slowly developing a fifth Jurassic World movie, to some degree. Its one of their biggest hitters, which is even more important with The Fast Saga coming to an end, but it’s good that they aren’t rushing it.

While crowds will likely always turn out for these movies for some dino-sized summer fun, it does need to find a story worth telling, especially after Rebirth went down the “there’s another secret island” route, something another sequel cannot do (right?!). Meanwhile, it already somewhat cut off the idea of dinosaurs in the real world, so it needs a strong creative reason to continue beyond another island/park (such an idea could lie in the blood samples the new trio recovered in Rebirth).

It’s also worth noting that Jurassic World Rebirth came together pretty quickly, at least in terms of when it was reported to when it released. It was early 2024 that it was reported to be in the works, filming by June of that year, and released in theaters in July 2025. Universal has typically aimed for three years between movies, so a summer 2028 release is still extremely plausible, and it’s fair to assume the movie will aim for that. I’d also imagine that the cast, and perhaps Gareth Edwards (who isn’t currently attached to anything else), would come back as well.

For me, Rebirth was one of the better Jurassic sequels. It had some similar issues in terms of story and (as we’ve seen quite a bit in the rebooted saga) too much focus on hybrids. But it also had a likable new trio, and above all, some great dinosaur sequences – things like the T.rex boat scene and Titanosaurus moment were fantastic, and as good as anything we’ve seen in these movies over the last 11 years. If it can build on those, with a stronger plot and some deeper characterization, then sign me up for Jurassic World 5 right now.

Jurassic World Rebirth is now available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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