“Jurassic World” needed a restart. Steven Spielberg knew who should you | Films

New York – “A big, big, yellowish, much inhumane eyeball stares desperately between wooden slats, part of a large box. The eye quickly shakes from one side to the other, vigilant like hell.”

So David Koepp's script for the “Jurassic Park” from 1993. Like a large part of Koepp's writing, it is much scarce and very visual. It does not tell the director (in this case Steven Spielberg), where the camera is to be placed, but it almost does.

“I asked Steven before we started: What are the restrictions for what I can write?” Koepp remembers. “CGI hadn't really been invented yet. He said:” Only your imagination. “”

But in the 32 years since the letter of Michael Crichtons Roman's adaptation, Koepp has not established itself through the borderlessness of his imagination, but through his expertise in the limitation of Hollywood's top script authors. Koepp is the master of the “bottle” film – films that are trapped by a single place or a condensed time -controlled framework. From David Fincher's “Panic Room” (2002) to Steven Soderbergh's “Presence” (2025), he is characterized in order to correct stories in clear, upside down film counts. Koepp can write everything – as long as there are parameters.

“The great film scientist and historian David Bordwell and I once talked about this concept and he said:” Because the world is too big? “I said:” This is exactly, “says Koepp.” The world is too big. If I can bring the camera anywhere, where I want if someone can appear on the entire planet in this film if it can take 130 years, how do I start? I want to make a nap.

“So I always searched for bottles to set the delicious wine.”

“Jurassic World”

In a way, the world of the “Jurassic World” became too big. In the last entry, the dinosaurs did not distribute “Jurassic World: Dominion” on the planet particularly well. “I don't know where to go,” says Koepp.

Koepp, a 62 -year -old from Pewaukee, Wisconsin, has had a “Jurassic” film since the second, 1997 “The Lost World”. At that time, Brian de Palma, with which Koepp on “Carlitos Way” and “Mission: Impossible” worked together, described him as “dinosaurs boy”. Koepp soon took care of other challenges. But when Spielberg called him a few years ago and asked: “Do you have another in you?” Koepp had a request: “Can we start over?”

“Jurassic World Rebirth”, which is now in cinemas, is a new beginning for one of the largest franchise companies in Hollywood's largest billion dollars. It is a new line-up of characters (Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey Co-Star), a new director (Gareth Edwards) and a new action. But just like 32 years ago, the dinosaurs are to play Koepps again.

“The first page assured me,” says Edwards. “It says: 'Written by David Koepp.”

For many cinema goers, this opening loan was a signal that what follows is probably written intelligently, bright and neatly located.

His script to Ron Howard's message drama “The Paper” from 1994 took place over 24 hours. “Secret Window” (2004) was hired in a state of New York. Even larger films like “War of the Worlds” prefer the fate of a family to global misfortune.

“I hear these ideas and am excited. Ok, now I'm limited,” says Koepp. “A structural or aesthetic restriction is like the Hayes code. They had to find many other interesting opportunities to imply that these people had sex, and that ensured a really interesting storytelling.”

The two stevens

Koepp's bottles can either fit summer glasses or low-budget indies. “Jurassic World Rebirth” is the third film, which Koepp only wrote this year and after a refined couple Thriller with Steven Soderbergh in “Presence” and “Black Bag” after a thriller couple.

“Presence”, like “Panic Room”, remains in a family house and it can be exploited from the perspective of a mind. “Black Bag” combines the Ehedrama deliciously with spy film, organized in a dinner party and a polygraphent test. These films ended a jagged trilogy with Soderbergh, starting with the pandemic of 2022 “Kimi”.

Much of Koepp's career, especially lately, through the two Stevens: Soderbergh and Spielberg.

“What they have in common is that both would have killed it in the 1940s,” says Koepp. “In the 1940s in the studio system when Jack Warner said:” I sit on the Wally Beery Wrestling picture. “Each of them would have said:” Great, here is what I will do. “Both share this sensitivity of: How do we do that?”

Spielberg and Koepp recently wrapped the production in Spielberg's unnamed new science fiction film, which is important for Spielberg. He gave Koepp 50-page treatment to turn into a script.

“It is even more concentrated than I have ever seen him in a film,” says Koepp. “There would be times – we would be in different time zones – I would wake up and there were 35 texts, and that took about a year. He was locked up in this film as I have ever seen him, and he is a guy that is included.”

“Your own chatt”

Koepp wanted to reorganize the franchise for “Jurassic World Rebirth”. Inspired by Chuck Jones' “” offered “for the street runner -cartoons (the road runner only says” Meep Meep “; all products come from ACME Corp. etc.), Koepp has settled nine line principles for the” Jura “franchise. This included things like “humor is oxygen” and that the dinosaurs are animals, not monsters.

A key to “rebirth” was geographically the dinosaurs. In the new film, they teamed up around the equator that deals in the tropical environment. Like “Jurassic Park”, the campaign mainly takes place on an island.

In the project, Edwards was warned of the beliefs of his screenwriter.

“At the end of my meeting with Spielberg he just smiled and said:” It's great. If you think we were difficult, wait until you get to know David Koepp, “says Edwards with a laugh.

But Edwards and Koepp quickly bang through similar tastes in films such as the original “King Kong”, whose poster hangs in Koepp's office. On the set, Edwards sometimes found a new dialogue for 30 seconds.

“In a minute I had this perfectly written 30-second interaction, which was on the subject, funny, a reversal perfect,” says Edwards. “It was as if they had their own chatt, but really good in writing.”

“Everyone has a note”

Especially in summer it is common to see a long list of names under the script. Blockbuster production is increasingly carried out by the committee. The missions are too high, thinking to leave it to a writer. But “Jurassic World Rebirth” is only Koepp's loan.

“There is an old saying:” None of us are as stupid as all of us, “says Koepp.” If you have eight or ten people who have significant contributions to the script, the chances are enormously stacked against them. They try to please many different people, and it is often not going well. “

The only time that it was in Koepp's experience was Sam Raimi's “Spider-Man” 2002. “I was also hired and fired three times in this film,” he says, “so you knew what you did.”

However, Koepp prefers to fall out of a film as soon as possible after research and outlined. “I like to expose it and to clean up the chaos later,” he says.

But the series of “Presence”, “Black Bag” and “Jurassic World Rebirth” may even have even tested Koepp's amazing edition. The intensive time of writing, which fell (“Black Bag” (“Black Bag” “, was written on the specification during the strike, not for lease rental, without being bought) and after the strike of the authors, it meant five months off without a day.” I might have broken a bit, “he says and shakes his head.

Nevertheless, the three films also show an experienced screenwriter who works in high equipment, carefully starts details and rests dinosaurs, ghosts and spies forward. Something like a perfect script – for Koepp, the “Rosemary's Baby” or “Jaws” – remains difficult to grasp. But even if they come close, there are always critics.

“After the first” Jurassic “film, I wrote a fifth grade class.” Then they wrote: 'PS, if you do the next, it doesn't take that long to get to the island.' Everyone has a note!