Gareth Edwards may have directed Jurassic World Rebirth, but he wants to take viewers back to how he felt watching the original film over 30 years ago.
The British filmmaker recently shared what it’s meant to him to have the chance to work on the follow-up to Steven Spielberg‘s 1993 Jurassic Park written by the original film’s writer David Koepp, and, in turn, pay homage to the original director’s iconic work.
“As I started turning each page,” Edwards exclusively told E! News’ Erin Lim Rhodes of receiving the script, “each encounter is like its own mini movie, and its own genre in a way, and it feels like a love letter to an early Spielberg film of some sort.”
While it felt strange to create this new take on the original, he felt confident knowing that Spielberg himself, who served as an executive producer on the film, entrusted him with the task.
“I would’ve thought it was sacrilegious, you can’t do that,” he explained, before joking about his deep bond with Spielberg. “But the fact that it was Steven himself—I call him Steven now, we’re close friends—the fact that it was Mr. Spielberg handing you this script, you feel like I’ve got a bit of license. This is never going to happen in my wildest dreams ever again, so you’ve got to do it.”
And that’s why Edwards, 50, doesn’t take the opportunity to work on such a classic film franchise for granted.
“You can’t get used to it,” he emphasized. “That’s so surreal and so weird, you can pretend it’s a dream, like I think I’m going to wake up, like in Back to the Future, and this whole thing, this whole last year or so, was just an illusion.”
Ultimately, the director wanted to replicate the way he felt while watching the original film for today’s viewers of the new installment.
“I was 17 when the original Jurassic Park came out and that was the year I went to film school,” he reflected. “This movie is a very selfish act, trying to recreate how I felt when I watched that first movie.”
He added that he wants to “take kids, and big kids, on that rollercoaster ride.”
To see more from the New York premiere of Jurassic World Rebirth, which hits theaters July 2, read on.
(E! and Universal Pictures are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)
Scarlett Johansson
Jonathan Bailey
Mahershala Ali
Rupert Friend
Brianna LaPaglia
Ed Skrein
Luna Blaise
David Iacono
Scarlett Johansson & Colin Jost
Bechir Sylvain
Audrina Miranda
Manuel Garcia-Rulfo
Philippine Velge
Erin Lim Rhodes
Frank Marshall, Manuel García-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Scarlett Johansson, Gareth Edwards, Rupert Friend, Bechir Sylvain, Philippine Velge, Ed Skrein & Patrick Crowley
Patrick Crowley, Manuel García-Rulfo, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Gareth Edwards, Bechir Sylvain, Philippine Velge & Frank Marshall
Aimee Mullins & Rupert Friend
