Jurassic World Rebirth's director didn't realise key scene was actually a dropped sequence from original ...Middle East

Jurassic World Rebirth – the seventh movie in the blockbuster dinosaur series – is about to stomp its way into cinemas.

And it’s a concerted effort to move back to the tone of the original Jurassic Park.

First off, David Koepp – who adapted Michael Crichton’s original novel for Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece – is back on scripting duties.

Even more excitingly, Koepp dipped back into Crichton’s book to cherry-pick one of the most famous scenes that never made it into that first movie: the river raft sequence.

In the original story, Dr Alan Grant and the grandchildren of park owner John Hammond are making their way back to the compound on Isla Nublar as the genetically-engineered dinosaurs run amuck.

Terrifyingly, a T-rex chases the trio as they sail down a river, leading to one of the most exciting moments in Crichton’s book.

The sequence was considered for Jurassic Park, and even storyboarded, but ultimately was dropped on account of being too expensive and, at a time when visual effects were in their infancy, impractical.

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Rebirth director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) wasn’t aware Koepp had plundered the sequence for the new film.

"I had no idea, is the honest truth. I just read the script," he tells RadioTimes.com. "I was 17 when I read the book, and that sequence is in there.

"But I remember bits to do with the waterfall [a sequence from the book that made it into Koepp’s script for 1997 sequel The Lost World], but I didn’t remember it well enough... it was 32 years ago.

"And so when I read the script and this little raft section came up, I thought, 'Oh, this is great. This is worth making the movie, just for this scene.'"

In Rebirth, Scarlett Johansson’s operative Zora leads a mission to an island to collect samples from three of the biggest dinosaurs in the hope of conjuring a medicine to cure heart disease.

Joining her is Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and pharmaceutical rep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend).

But it’s a family – the Delgados – who have also been stranded on the island that face the T-rex, when it awakens from its slumber on the banks of a river.

Curiously, Edwards only discovered about the river raft sequence after he came across a book I wrote, Jurassic Park: The Official Script Book – which delves into various drafts written as the original production evolved.

At the time, Edwards was working crunch hours with his editor, Jabez Olssen, to get Rebirth finished. "We’re in the edit, and we honestly had so little time. We were doing 14 hour days, seven days a week. We had one day where we had to wait for some things. We had about half an hour off. And so me and the editor went, 'Let’s just go out.'"

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Edwards and Olssen decided to take a browse in a nearby comic store, where Olssen found a copy of The Official Script Book.

"He brought it back to the office, and as he was flicking through it, he went, 'There’s a river raft scene! It’s from the original Jurassic!'" Edwards explains. "It was so surreal, going, 'Oh my god, this is something Spielberg wanted to do at some point.'

"And obviously for budgetary reasons and VFX reasons, they didn’t do it in the end, and then they picked it up and put it into this movie.

"I think I’m glad I didn’t know, because I think I’d have been too intimidated by that, and I probably would have looked at the storyboards too much."

For Edwards, it was a no-brainer taking on a Jurassic movie. "I always wanted to make film like Spielberg, because he’s my hero, and he’s the reason I got into filmmaking," he says.

Added to which, he calls Koepp’s script for Rebirth "a gift on a plate" for any director. "To me, it was like this pizza full of slices, and each slice was like a little nod to an early Spielberg film in some way… it was like playing in the World Cup final and getting to play in each position on the team."

One of those 'slices' is the gang’s attempt to gain a blood sample from the prehistoric aquatic beast, the Mosasaur – which brings Spielberg’s 1975 shark classic Jaws to mind.

So did Spielberg give him any advice? "He joked about filming on water because of Jaws," Edwards replies, alluding to the trouble Spielberg faced when shooting his movie in Martha’s Vineyard.

Edwards had never shot on the ocean before, and admits he was "naïve" about the difficulties. But the results are spectacular. "I’m glad we persevered."

Jurassic World Rebirth is in cinemas from 2nd July.

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