Earlier this week, it was reported that Jurassic World 4 had potentially found a director in Bullet Train’s David Leitch. Smash cut to now, and Leitch is no longer attached to the project.
Per Deadline, Leitch and Universal split amicably due to “creative differences.” Before then, it sounded like the director was the frontrunner because Universal is “very high” on his upcoming flick, The Fall Guy. And with his action-movie chops, you can see why they’d want to get him on board to kickstart a new saga of humans and dinosaurs for the long-running franchise. What went wrong? Sources speaking to the Hollywood Reporter claim it wouldn’t have been a David Leitch movie, just one directed by him.
Jurassic World 4 was officially unveiled in late January, but it’s apparently far along in development that soft prep and dino designs are already being cooked up. One source said there just “[isn’t] enough time to work with new ideas,” even as it sounds like Leitch wanted to add some action movie spice into the mix. The implication is that Universal really just needed someone to get the thing out the door for its already announced summer 2025 date, similar to how Louis Leterrier was brought on for Fast X after original director Justin Lin bowed out.
With Leitch gone, the hunt for a new director is on, though Deadline didn’t list any potential candidates, or who else was in the running with him to helm the project. While characters from the original two Jurassic trilogies aren’t coming back, it’s got a returning writer in David Koepp, who penned the original film. With how important that franchise is to Universal’s theme park arm, you can imagine the studio is going to nail down a director sooner rather than later.
It hasn’t been that long since Jurassic World Dominion, though, the franchise could probably stand to be gone a little longer. The gap between Jurassic Park 3 and the original Jurassic World was 14 years, and while another one of these was always in the cards, a three-year break doesn’t feel quite right. And given how much Dominion seemed to have burned through the World series’ remaining goodwill, a little more time away would surely do it (and all of us) some good, don’t you think?
At time of writing, Jurassic World 4 is still locked in for July 2, 2025.
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