Yahoo Lifestyle Universal Kicks Off Its CinemaCon With 43-Piece Orchestra & ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’
Talk about classing up CinemaCon. It was like the Hollywood Bowl inside Caesars Colosseum on Wednesday as a 43-piece orchestra led by Emmy-winning music director Rickey Minor fired up Universal’s presentation with 10 minutes from such pics as E.T., Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, How to Train Your Dragon, Psycho, Jaws, the Fast & Furious movies, Despicable Me, Shrek, Oppenheimer and last year’s Conclave and Wicked.
But then the orchestra continued to play — with music from Jurassic World Rebirth preceding that pic’s new trailer unveil with director Gareth Edwards, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali onstage. Ali spoke about the wonders of shooting in Thailand with snakes and rivers. “There’s no f’n way I’m doing that,” said Ali about Edwards’ direction through the jungle. “Which is why we shot Jonathan Bailey’s scenes first,” responded Edwards.
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“We wanted to put the scares back in Jurassic,” added Johansson. “It’s been a lifelong dream to be in a Jurassic movie. Each time they were making a new one, I reached out and said I was available.”
“This time I went to Steven Spielberg directly and told him I would play any role even if I was eaten in the first five minutes,” said the Oscar-nominated actress.
She continued “We wanted to put the scares back into Jurassic, keep the dinosaurs hidden, you turn around no one really sees them…”
At which Edwards quipped “… like movies released on streaming.”
The filmmaker spoke about his inspiration: I suffered from a rare condition in childhood where I was compelled to watch Jurassic Park 10 times a year.”
The fourth film in the Jurassic World series follows a team of scientists and others whose main objective is to acquire genetic samples from three of the largest dinosaurs in the sea, on land and in the air. Set five years after Jurassic World Dominion (2022), the planet has become inhospitable for dinosaurs, so those that still exist have become isolated to environments in which their breeds once flourished. The three most colossal creatures in the different parts of the ecosystem could prove necessary for a life-saving drug for humans.
When it comes to the footage — you think you’ve seen a Jurassic movie before, but, man, not like this. It starts like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 in some kind of white lab and everyone in astronaut lab suits … but one of the techs gets stuck in a locked tank with a T. rex. “Please open the door for me,” begs one worker on the wrong side. Too late, big teeth, and she’s gone.
We see Ali, Johansson and Bailey’s characters exploring the remains of the theme park of the other Jurassic World movies. There’s a new flying type of dino and pterodactyls galore. “Two-dozen species have survived here alone — the theme park owner did experimental work leaving the worst ones here,” we learn. The intrepid trio scale cliffs, run across forests and woods all kinds of creatures in pursuit on ground and air to a massive, scaly sea creature from the Colin Trevorrow movies chasing down a yacht battleship with Johansson firing back. “We put ourselves in a place where we don’t belong. Survival is a long shot,” says Bailey. “That is kind of our specialty,” responds Johansson.
Universal’s action-packed monster movie Jurassic World Rebirth last month topped a ranking compiled by digital outlet Fandango of moviegoers’ most-anticipated releases of summer 2025.
Universal opens the film globally July 2. Jurassic World Rebirth is produced by Amblin Entertainment.
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