Universal Pictures has officially set its new dinosaur adventure, Jurassic World: Rebirth, for a 2 July 2025 North-American release, with a London premiere on 17 June. The standalone sequel stars Scarlett Johansson as covert-ops specialist Zora Bennett and Jonathan Bailey as palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis, alongside Mahershala Ali and Rupert Friend.
Johansson told Entertainment Weekly she was drawn to a role she could “shape from the ground up” after years in ensemble franchises. Bailey, meanwhile, said in GQ that he hopes the film will “do every field palaeontologist proud.”
Director Gareth Edwards admits he opened David Koepp’s script “wanting to hate it” but found “an opportunity of a lifetime” that could be completed within a single year. Steven Spielberg remains executive producer, having lured Koepp back and revived a long-shelved river-raft sequence from Michael Crichton’s original novel.
The production is anchored at Sky Studios Elstree, tapping the same tax-relief programme that returned £89 million to Universal on 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion. Dominion went on to top $1 billion worldwide, a benchmark analysts say Rebirth must match on its reported $180 million budget.
Early tracking suggests the new instalment could open to $115–135 million over the five-day Independence Day stretch, according to Deadline, with rival forecasts as low as $100 million. Scientific adviser Jack Horner has praised the film’s feathered, more realistically coloured raptors, even while conceding their on-screen roar is “pure cinema.”
Johansson has already made headlines off-screen, saying oversized superhero casts sometimes left her feeling like “a plot device,” a dynamic she believes the leaner Rebirth ensemble avoids. Fans, for their part, turned a London photocall into social-media fodder when Bailey arrived in flip-flops, proof that the franchise can spark chatter even without a dinosaur in sight.
A recent teaser featuring a forbidden island of mutant experiments had Vulture calling the premise “a totally sane idea,” underscoring the series’ self-aware streak. Whether this blend of nostalgia and novelty reignites the 31-year saga will be clear when the film roars into cinemas—and, later, onto Peacock—this summer.
