NEW YORK (AP) ā
EXT JUNGLE NIGHT
An eyeball, big, yellowish, distinctly inhuman, stares raptly between wooden slats, part of a large crate. The eye darts from side to side quickly, alert as hell.
So begins David Koeppās script to 1993ās āJurassic Park.ā Like much of Koeppās writing, itās crisply terse and intensely visual. It doesnāt tell the director (in this case ) where to put the camera, but it nearly does.
āI asked Steven before we started: What are the limitations about what I can write?ā Koepp recalls. āCGI hadnāt really been invented yet. He said: āOnly your imagination.āā
Yet in the 32 years since penning the adaptation of Michael Crichtonās novel, Koepp has established himself as one of Hollywoodās top screenwriters not through the boundlessness of his imagination but by his expertise in limiting it. Koepp is the master of the ābottleā movie ā films hemmed in by a single location or condensed timed frame. From David Fincherās āPanic Roomā (2002) to (2025), he excels at corralling stories into uncluttered, headlong movie narratives. Koepp can write anything ā as long as there are parameters.
āThe great film scholar and historian David Bordwell and I were talking about that concept once and he said, āBecause the world is too big?ā I said, āThatās it, exactly,āā Koepp says. āThe world is too big. If I can put the camera anywhere I want, if anybody on the entire planet can appear in this film, if it can last 130 years, how do I even begin? It makes me want to take a nap.
"So Iāve always looked for bottles in which to put the delicious wine.ā
Reining in āJurassic World'
By some measure, the world of āJurassic Worldā got too big. In the last entry, 2022ās not particularly well received the dinosaurs had spread across the planet. āI donāt know where else to go with that,ā Koepp says.
Koepp, a 62-year-old native of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, hadnāt written a āJurassicā movie since the second one, 1997ās āThe Lost World.ā Back then, Brian De Palma, whom Koepp worked with on āCarlitoās Wayā and āMission: Impossible,ā took to calling him ādinosaur boy.ā Koepp soon after moved onto other challenges. But when Spielberg called him up a few years ago and asked, āDo you have one more in you?ā Koepp had one request: āCan we start over?ā
āJurassic World Rebirth,ā which opens in theaters July 2, is a fresh start for one of Hollywoodās biggest multi-billion-dollar franchises. Itās a new cast of characters (Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey co-star), a new director (Gareth Edwards) and a new storyline. But just as they were 32 years ago, the dinosaurs are again Koepp's to play with.
āThe first page reassured me,ā says Edwards. āIt said: āWritten by David Koepp.āā
For many moviegoers, that opening credit has been a signal that what follows is likely to be smartly scripted, brightly paced and neatly situated. His script to Ron Howard's 1994 news drama āThe Paperā took place over 24 hours. āSecret Windowā (2004) was set in an upstate New York cabin. Even bigger scale films like āWar of the Worldsā favor the fate of one family over global calamity.
āI hear those ideas and I get excited. OK, now Iām constrained,ā says Koepp. āA structural or aesthetic constraint is like the . They had to come up with many other interesting ways to imply those people had sex, and that made for some really interesting storytelling.ā
The two Stevens
Koeppās bottles can fit either summer spectacles or low-budget indies. āJurassic World Rebirthā is the third film penned by Koepp just this year, following a nifty pair of thrillers with Steven Soderbergh in and
āPresence,ā like āPanic Room,ā stays within a family home, and itās seen entirely from the perspective of a ghost. āBlack Bagā deliciously combines marital drama with spy movie, organized around a dinner party and a polygraph test. Those films completed a zippy trilogy with Soderbergh, beginning with 2022's blistering pandemic-set
Much of Koepp's career, particularly recently, run through the two Stevens: Soderbergh and Spielberg.
āWhat they have in common is they both would have absolutely killed it in the 1940s,ā Koepp says. āIn the studio system in the 1940s, if Jack Warner said āIām putting you on the Wally Beery wrestling picture.ā Either one of them would have said, āGreat, hereās what Iām going to do.ā They both share that sensibility of: How do we get this done?"
Spielberg and Koepp recently wrapped production on Spielberg's untitled new science fiction film, said to be especially meaningful to Spielberg. He gave a 50-page treatment to Koepp to turn into a script.
"Itās even more focused than Iāve ever seen him on a movie,ā says Koepp. āThere would be times ā weād be in different time zones ā Iād wake up and there were 35 texts, and this went on for about a year. Heās as locked in on that movie as Iāve ever seen him, and heās a guy who locks in.ā
āYour own ChatGPTā
For āJurassic World Rebirth,ā Koepp wanted to reorder the franchise. Inspired by Chuck Jonesā ācommandmentsā for the Road Runner cartoons (the Road Runner only says āmeep meep"; all products are from the ACME Corporation, etc.), Koepp for the āJurassicā franchise. They included things like āhumor is oxygenā and that the dinosaurs are animals, not monsters.
A key to āRebirthā was geographically herding the dinosaurs. In the new movie, theyāve clustered around the equator, drawn to the tropical environment. Like āJurassic Park,ā the action takes place primarily on an island.
Going into the project, Edwards was warned about his screenwriter's convictions.
āAt the end of my meeting with Spielberg, he just smiled and said, āThatās great. If you think we were difficult, wait until you meet David Koepp,āā says Edwards, laughing.
But Edwards and Koepp quickly bonded over similar tastes in movies, like the original āKing Kong,ā a poster of which hangs in Koeppās office. On set, Edwards would sometimes find the need for 30 seconds of new dialogue.
āWithin like a minute, Iād get this perfectly written 30 second interaction that was on theme, funny, had a reversal in it ā perfect," says Edwards. āIt was like having your own ChatGPT but actually really good at writing.ā
āEveryoneās got a note'
In the summer, especially, itās common to see a long list of names under the screenplay. Blockbuster-making is, increasingly, done by committee. The stakes are too high, the thinking goes, to leave it to one writer. But āJurassic World Rebirthā bears just Koeppās credit.
āThereās an old saying: āNo one of us is as dumb as all of us,'ā Koepp says. āWhen you have eight or 10 people who have significant input into the script, the odds are stacked enormously against you. Youāre trying to please a lot of different people, and it often doesnāt go well.ā
The only time that worked, in Koepp's experience, was Sam Raimi's 2002 āSpider-Man.ā āI was also hired and fired three times on that movie,ā he says, "so maybe they knew what they were doing.ā
Koepp, though, prefers to ā after research and outlining ā let a movie topple out of his mind as rapidly as possible. āI like to gun it out and clean up the mess later,ā he says.
But the string of āPresence,ā āBlack Bagā and āJurassic World Rebirthā may have tested even Koeppās prodigious output. The intense period of writing, which fell before, during ("Black Bag" was written on spec during the strike, not for hire, without being shopped) and after the writers strike, he says, meant five months without a day off. āI might have broke something,ā he says, shaking his head.
Still, the three films also show a veteran screenwriter working in high gear, judiciously meting out details and keeping dinosaurs, ghosts and spies hurtling forward. Anything like a perfect script ā for Koepp, thatās āRosemaryās Babyā or āJawsā ā remains elusive. But even when you come close, there are always critics.
āAfter the first āJurassicā movie, a fifth-grade class all wrote letters to me, which was very nice,ā Koepp recalls. āThen they wrote, āPS, when you do the next one, donāt have it take so long to get to the island.ā Everyoneās got a note!āā
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
