David Koepp’s name is attached to some massive movies. Jurassic Park, Sam Raimi’s version of Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible, and War of the Worlds. He has been constant in the world of blockbuster movie writing for decades. His next project is a return to the world of dinosaurs for Jurassic World: Rebirth.
Koepp was doing publicity for Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, which he also wrote, he was asked about the upcoming movie by The Discourse (via Dark Horizons).
He promised a return to the tone of the original:
“That was a ball. I had such a nice time on it. I hope people like the movie because the series tended to change after three, and it felt like, ‘Okay, so let’s change our tone. Steven [Spielberg] and I were interested in a tone that was maybe more akin to the very first movie. I saw it early on as a mission movie. I like things that are driven by bottles, by containment, you know?
And so, developing a limited team and a thing that they have to accomplish – that was all really fun. And it was just fun to return to that world of great adventure backed by real science and write some cool new characters. You don’t often get a chance to have a blank slate and say, ‘What do you want to do?’ There were no franchise expectations other than dinosaurs.”
Koepp said he started by writing a list of rules to govern the world of this iteration of the Jurassic franchise:
“I actually wrote a list of our nine commandments, which was inspired by Chuck Jones, who had written nine commandments for the Roadrunner cartoons – like all adventures must take place in the American Southwest, gravity is always the coyote’s worst enemy, all products must come from the Acme corporation. So I made a list of things that we had to abide by – one was the events of the previous six movies that cannot be contradicted or denied because I don’t like a retcon. Those are no fun. Two, Humor is oxygen. Science must be real. You know, all the things that we wanted our movie to be. And I just had a great fun doing it with Steven and then with Gareth [Edwards].”
Jurassic World: Rebirth opens next July after being fast-tracked by Universal.