Gareth Edwards Out as Director for Unnecessary Jurassic Park Sequel

There are so many obvious jokes that someone could make about the Jurassic Park franchise being dated. It’s like a dried-up fossil! They brought it back to life just like the dinosaurs in the movies! Or perhaps most fittingly, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. Change the word “scientists” to “filmmakers” and you’ve got yourself the Jurassic Park franchise as it is right now. Maybe this is why director Gareth Edwards has just left the latest entry in the series.

Gareth Edwards Rise to Fame

Gareth Edwards doesn’t have an extensive filmography, but he has been given the keys to some major franchises. His first high profile picture was 2014’s Godzilla. He was given the director’s chair largely thanks to the success of his 2010 film, Monsters. Then, Godzilla‘s success led to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and eventually Jurassic Word Rebirth in 2025. Edwards was on deck to do the sequel to that film but has reportedly left due to “creative differences.” He’s now turning his attention to a project of his own making. Meanwhile, this Jurassic Park sequel supposedly already has a script ready to go from David Koepp. His work on the franchise includes Rebirth as well as the original 1993 film and its follow-up, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Maybe it’s good that Edwards got out while he did though. What more can anyone do with this franchise beyond what’s already been done? Are the “creative differences” about this franchise not having any source left for creativity? That would make sense. Probably not the actual reason but it makes sense. If Edwards wants to work on his own original project, that seems a lot more fulfilling than another Jurassic Park entry. How much more can you beat an already dead tyrannosaurus?

The History of Jurassic Park Films

Let’s seriously look at the franchise as it currently exists. The first film a stone-cold classic. Steven Spielberg delivered something that was absolutely phenomenal. That original film combines the awe and majesty that comes with seeing dinosaurs with thrilling horror. Those are both things that Spielberg had done well with in the past. Think about E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Both of those films have this of wonderment around something that shouldn’t exist in the world we know. Then they’re introduced into the lives of the characters and shown to us, as an audience, as if they’re real. But this is also the man who directed Jaws. So Spielberg also knows how to create tension and fear. Jurassic Park is the perfect marriage of all that.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park was never going to quite live up to that. It’s a pretty unnecessary sequel but one that is done with Spielberg’s signature touches. There’s enjoyment to be had, but it doesn’t do anything novel. It does bring a T-Rex into the city of San Diego. That’s the only thing the movie basically accomplishes that we haven’t seen before. It’s basically saying, “Did you like dinosaurs on an island? Well how would you like to see one in a city?! Oh, but only in like, the unnecessary third act.”

To that end, Jurassic Park III is in some ways, a better movie. That’s not to say it’s a great film, but it knows what it wants to be and that’s it. Director Joe Johnston delivers what’s effectively, a B-movie with the budget and production values of a major studio release. It’s a complete throwaway of a movie but it does bring back Alan Grant from the first film. And it’s a 90-minute action film with dinosaurs. It is what it is and doesn’t try to be anything more. It showed that there was really nowhere else to go with this franchise without ending it on a sour note.

Park Begets World

Yet, fourteen years later, the franchise gets reborn with Jurassic World. Fittingly enough, the franchise is revived with the story being a rehash of the first film. Someone opens up a theme park with revived dinosaurs! What could possibly go wrong? Well obviously, everything does. That’s not to say this is a bad film by any means. It’s fun and thrilling for sure. But it’s as if director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow knows they can’t really do something completely new. So instead, we’ll just go with something old and do it in a new way.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom fittingly follows in the footsteps of The Lost World: Jurassic Park and takes the story out of the theme park and into the real world. This time they’re saving dinosaurs from a volcano or something. Look, it’s again, not a sequel that we need but one that just continues the franchise. But you can already see the constant reuse of old ideas and bringing them back again.

Then there’s Jurassic World Dominion which kind of just exists as fan service. Bringing back the original cast with Sam Neill, Larua Dern, and Jeff Goldblum was a love letter to fans. The story though, that’s just completely out there. We’ve got dinosaurs, locusts, genetic engineering of children and so many other things. We’re just so far removed from the spirit of the original movie. What are we even doing at this point with the films?

A Rebirth and Simplification

That’s why Jurassic World: Rebirth had the goal of trying to return the franchise to its roots. It has a nonsense story about a group of people who are hired to enter a dinosaur infested area. Their goal is to retrieve some biological samples that are supposed to help cure some heart disease. Chaos ensues. Obviously. It strips away the grandiose pomposity that some of the previous films had obtained. In some ways, it’s actually closer to Jurassic Park III. But aside from it taking place in the same universe as all the other films, how is it a Jurassic Park/World film? What does it even mean to be a Jurassic Park movie at this point? Because it takes place in a world where dinosaurs exist? Unless the lore from the previous films directly impacts the plot, couldn’t it be its own film?

Jurassic World: Rebirth is also the first film since Jurassic Park III not to cross the billion-dollar mark at the box office. It was still successful mind you. $872 million on a budget of as high as $250 million is still profit. It’s just not as much profit as studios would like to see. So where does the franchise go from here? Maybe Gareth Edwards didn’t see a great path forward. Maybe what he envisioned as a director didn’t fit with what Universal sees as the future of the franchise.

We think that this brings up a bigger question of what it means to be part of a franchise. When we think of other movie franchises that ran on way too long, we think about characters. Like take Rocky for example. Once Rocky V happened, it seemed like this was just ridiculous at this point. But at least the common thread of Rocky as a character was there. And then Rocky Balboa happened. Then Creed. They were stories that continued Rocky’s journey and they fit with who his character was. Jurassic Park/World doesn’t have that connective tissue working for it.

The Future

We have no idea what’s going to happen with the next installment. There have been no announcements on who’s going to take over for Gareth Edwards either. If there’s money being left on the table though, Universal is going to find a way to pursue it. It’s really not a good idea to look at a franchise from that perspective, but that’s the reality we live in. We’ll just have to see what meat is left to pick off these dinosaur bones in the years to come.