J.A. Bayona Could Be Heading Back to Jurassic World for the Rebirth Sequel
The Jurassic franchise could be welcoming back a familiar filmmaker, with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona reportedly emerging as the frontrunner to direct the next film following Jurassic World Rebirth.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal is eyeing Bayona to take over the next instalment after Rebirth director Gareth Edwards opted not to return. The project remains in development, so Bayona has not yet been officially announced as director, but he is currently leading the field for the job. Rebirth stars Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey are expected to return, although further story and casting details remain under wraps.
It would mark Bayona’s first return to the dinosaur franchise since directing 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and while that film proved divisive, his particular approach could make him an interesting choice following the direction taken by Rebirth. Bayona has always been comfortable mixing spectacle with horror, something evident long before dinosaurs entered his career through films including The Orphanage and A Monster Calls. Fallen Kingdom eventually allowed him to turn a Jurassic movie into something resembling a Gothic monster film, particularly once the action moved into Lockwood Manor and the Indoraptor started creeping through the building.
Jurassic World Keeps Changing Hands
The franchise’s modern era began with Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World in 2015, fourteen years after Jurassic Park III had seemingly brought the series to a halt. Whatever anyone thought of its deliberate echoes of Steven Spielberg’s original, audiences turned up in enormous numbers. The film earned approximately $1.67 billion worldwide and transformed what had become a dormant property into one of Universal’s biggest franchises again.
Bayona followed with Fallen Kingdom, before Trevorrow returned to direct Jurassic World Dominion in 2022. That film brought together the Jurassic World characters with original Jurassic Park stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, effectively closing that particular chapter while leaving Universal with the slightly awkward question of what exactly Jurassic should become next.
The answer was 2025’s Jurassic World Rebirth. Edwards directed from a screenplay by original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp, with Johansson playing covert operations specialist Zora Bennett, Ali as Duncan Kincaid and Bailey as palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis. Set five years after Dominion, the story sent its characters into isolated equatorial territory in search of genetic material from three enormous prehistoric creatures.
Financially, Rebirth didn’t approach the extraordinary heights of the first Jurassic World, but calling it unsuccessful would be difficult. It finished its theatrical run with approximately $869 million worldwide, another substantial result for a franchise that has now been sending people to islands full of dangerous prehistoric animals for more than three decades. Apparently nobody in this universe has yet considered simply leaving the dinosaurs alone.
Could Bayona Take Jurassic Back Towards Horror?
One of the more interesting things about bringing Bayona back would be the opportunity to continue pushing Jurassic towards its monster-movie potential. Edwards was hardly an accidental choice for Rebirth. The filmmaker behind 2014’s Godzilla understands scale, creatures and the effectiveness of making human beings look extremely small when something enormous decides it would like to eat them.
Bayona approaches monsters differently, but Fallen Kingdom demonstrated just how comfortable he was leaning into horror imagery. The film’s latter sections put the Indoraptor inside a dark mansion, allowing Bayona to play with shadows, stalking sequences and imagery that occasionally felt closer to Gothic horror than the adventure tone traditionally associated with Jurassic Park. Whatever criticisms can be levelled at Fallen Kingdom, nobody could accuse Bayona of simply photocopying Spielberg.
That willingness to change tone could be useful for a franchise now seven films deep. The original 1993 Jurassic Park remains the standard every sequel inevitably gets compared against, but endlessly attempting to reconstruct its combination of wonder, terror and adventure has increasingly diminishing value. Spielberg already made Jurassic Park. Nobody needs another filmmaker spending two hours trying to convince us they’ve made it again.
Bayona returning doesn’t guarantee the next film would become a full-blown dinosaur horror movie, of course, and at this stage we don’t even know that he will ultimately sign on. What it would provide is a director already familiar with the franchise who has previously demonstrated that he’s willing to push its creatures into darker territory.
For now, the next Jurassic World has no announced release date, and Universal has yet to officially confirm its director. What we do know is that Johansson, Ali and Bailey’s Rebirth adventure is expected to continue, while the filmmaker who once unleashed the Indoraptor inside Lockwood Manor may be preparing to open the dinosaur enclosure once again.
