- Jurassic World Rebirth will take the dino-franchise in a new direction
- Scarlett Johansson will lead director Gareth Edwards’ new cast
- Fans are convinced her co-star Jonathan Bailey will play a classic role
Jurassic World Rebirth is stomping our way with a brand new cast led by Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali.
Under the guidance of Monsters filmmaker Gareth Edwards, they will be sent to a new island featuring new dinosaurs.
Read more: All we know about the Jurassic World Rebirth D-Rex
The movie’s first trailer shed more light on the seventh instalment of this long-running blockbuster franchise. Johansson will play Zora Bennett, a covert operatives specialist who leads a small team on a mission to Site C. According to the trailer, this new island was used as a home for all the dinosaurs deemed to dangerous for the original Jurassic Park.
Together with team leader Duncan Kincaid (Ali), a palaeontologist named Dr. Henry Loomis and some other unfortunate participants, the group must extract the DNA of the three largest remaining dinosaurs. If they succeed, modern medicine will benefit. If they fail, they become dinner.
Read more: Jurassic World Rebirth timeline explained: When does it take place?
That’s the elevator pitch although like any good blockbuster, we’re sure Jurassic World Rebirth is saving plenty of secrets. It hasn’t stopped fans from dissecting any information they can find though, with some convinced the movie will feature the return of a familiar face.
Who is Jonathan Bailey playing in Jurassic World Rebirth?
Wicked star Bailey is playing paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis in Jurassic Park Rebirth. In the film’s first trailer, his character is seen to be very knowledgeable about the dinosaurs Bennett and her team will encounter on Site C.
He also seems to be a bit nervous about his odds of surviving his trip to the island. As he says in the trailer, “we put ourselves in a place we don’t belong. Survival is a long shot.”
This matches up with comments made by Edwards who told Entertainment Weekly that Loomis is far more comfortable dealing with dinosaur bones than the real thing.
“He’s out of his depth in terms of the military element of the mission,” Edwards explained. “He’s very comfortable on digs and expeditions but not the life-and-death risks that Kincaid and Zora are getting into.”
Is Jonathan Bailey playing the Jurassic Park kid?
In February 2025, Bailey hinted that Loomis will share a connection to Sam Neill’s original Jurassic Park hero and fellow paleontologist Dr Alan Grant.
“I’ve always wanted to make Dr. Alan Grant proud,” Bailey told Vanity Fair. “You’ll have to wait and see to see what sort of link there is between them.”
Fans quickly picked up on this line, with many guessing that Loomis may be an all-grown-up version of the kid that Grant goes after in the opening moments of the original Jurassic Park.
What happened to the Raptor kid?
For those who need a refresher, the kid in question suggested that velociraptors weren’t scary whilst on a dig. Thankfully, Dr Grant reminded him why they are scary in his own uniquely visceral way.
Before you get too excited, Forbes points out that the same theory was pointed towards Chris Pratt’s Jurassic World trilogy character Owen Grady. Unfortunately, that proved to be nothing but dino dust.
That said, there is reason for hope due to the fact Jurassic World Rebirth has been written by David Koepp, the same screenwriter behind Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park.
Could he have weaved in a nice full circle moment for this key character? Time will tell.
