From space to dinosaurs, Universal nabs Star Wars: Rogue One director to helm Jurassic World 4

Universal has finally set a director for the upcoming Jurassic World 4 in stone, and they've found one in Star Wars: Rogue One director Gareth Edwards.

Earlier this month, Universal locked in a release date for Jurassic World, and at the time it was in talks with Deadpool 2 director David Leitch. Those talks reportedly fell through due to creative differences, with Leitch leaving the project behind. Now, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Edwards, known for directing the 2014 Godzilla and the solo Star Wars outing Rogue One, is joining Jurassic World 4 as director. The film is still set to arrive July 2, 2025, only a little bit over a year away, not much time for a major blockbuster, so Universal was apparently quite urgently looking for a director to take over.

THR also claimed that due to the short turnaround, Universal was looking for a director that would be happy to just shoot the project rather than exert any kind of auteurial control over it - supposedly part of the reason that Leitch left the film. It's not like Edwards isn't familiar with monster-flicks either, his directorial debut was the slightly more indie Monsters, and the slightly less indie aforementioned Godzilla. More recently he directed The Creator, released last year, a sci-fi action film about a war on AI (yes, the irony of the rise of AI generated art over the last year isn't lost on me).

Where Edwards is coming into the series as a newbie to the world of Jurassic Park, he'll at the very least be accompanied by someone a bit more familiar with it. Back in January, it was announced that David Koepp, the original writer behind 1993's Jurassic Park, as well as its 1997 sequel The Lost World, is returning to pen the upcoming Jurassic World sequel. It seems like Universal is looking for a bit of a creative refresh, as while the past couple of Jurassic World films have been financial hits, they've been critical flops.

Jurassic World 4, still currently untitled, is set to arrive in cinemas July 2, 2025.