You’ve returned to the “Jurassic” franchise to write “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which releases this summer. What was the impetus behind that homecoming?
Koepp: The first two movies were two of my favorite experiences ever. And Steven said, “What about starting over? Let’s try something all new.” I said, “Oh, that’s a cool idea. What if blah, blah, blah,” and then I threw an idea back. That’s it. It caught. You do that all the time with your friends and collaborators: throw ideas back and forth. And sometimes they catch, usually they don’t. There is pressure because it’s going to cost a lot of money and there are going to be big expectations and blah, blah, blah. But there was no pressure at first — just the pursuit of our ideas.
There isn’t even a source novel you’re pulling from for this one, right?
No. I reread the two novels to get myself back in that mode though. We did take some things from them. There was a sequence from the first novel that we’d always wanted in the original movie, but didn’t have room for. We were like, “Hey, we get to use that now.” But just to get back in that head space 30 years later — is it still fun? And the answer is yes, it still really is. Dinosaurs are still fun.