Watch the latest 'A Colossal Discussion' Featurette for Jurassic World Rebirth, the latest installment in the Jurassic franchise distributed by Universal Pictures. Join director Gareth Edwards and Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences Lab, on the real science behind Jurassic World and de-extinction. Jurassic World Rebirth is in theaters on July 2.
Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.
Scarlett Johansson plays skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett, contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park. There, in a terrain populated by dinosaurs of vastly different species, they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that has been hidden from the world for decades.
Ali is Duncan Kincaid, Zora’s most trusted team member; Jonathan Bailey (Wicked, Bridgerton) plays paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis; Rupert Friend (Homeland, Obi-Wan Kenobi) appears as Big Pharma representative Martin Krebs and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer, Murder on the Orient Express) plays Reuben Delgado, the father of the shipwrecked civilian family.
00:04This is the most advanced genetics lab, you know, arguably in the world,
00:07and, you know, we definitely spare no expense in the process.
00:10This is the real Jurassic Park, isn't it?
00:12I think it's Jurassic Park with a conservation focus.
00:17You don't see that every day.
00:19Or ever.
00:21What is it like, you know, to be the steward of, like, this next chapter of something that means so much to so many people?
00:27Jurassic Park inspired so many scientists in this building, in this lab, you know, saw that movie growing up and thought science is cool, genetics is cool.
00:39The second you're stood, you know, in the middle of Thailand, holding a camera, you know, there's going to be a dinosaur over there, and Scarlett Johansson.
00:47There's something about it that just feels like, you know, this is what I grew up thinking the world would be.
00:52When you're a kid, you're promised so much through science fiction and films.
00:56And you're like, where's my jetpack?
00:58We're not living on the moon.
00:59Yeah.
01:00Where's my vacation to Venus?
01:01Yeah.
01:02And I feel like genetically engineering an extinct animal felt like it was one of those.
01:07Yeah.
01:07Your choice was, well, let's change the world, right, and make it happen.
01:12Woo!
01:12So when we were in the edit of Jurassic World Rebirth, front page news happened around the whole world about the de-extinction of the dire wolf, which is basically your life's work slightly, right?
01:26It created this, like, insane excitement around the world for not just dire wolves, but also for wolf conservation and everything.
01:35And it was amazing to see the reaction in terms of just, like, this major scientific achievement that we were all sharing together.
01:42We're losing species at such an insane rate that being able to at least back them up and protect them while developing technologies for de-extinction is just a redundancy plan for conservation.
01:54In our movie, the idea is the characters are going to this island to get these DNA samples from the world's largest dinosaurs.
02:01It can help, like, cure heart disease, so that's not that far-fetched.
02:04There's hidden cures and hidden data in all these different species that we're losing, so it's definitely not that far-fetched.
02:11You're really de-extincting species.
02:13Like, even this behind us, right, this is mammoth in ice.
02:15So Colossal is arguably the number one genetic engineering company in the world.
02:20People think that this is what we do.
02:22They just go out to Siberia and get massive frozen mammoths and, like, resuscitate them or something, right?
02:27And as we go this way, you'll learn a little bit about the process.
02:30We actually use a combination of bones and teeth that we drill into.
02:34So say you've got all those samples, right?
02:35You use it to compare to an existing species?
02:37Exactly.
02:38You identify the most important genes of its closest living relatives.
02:42We want to resurrect the core phenotypes or physical attributes, like what made a mammoth a mammoth.
02:46So you're looking at mammoth hairs growing from the edits that we've put into Asian elephant tissue,
02:52and you can actually grow specific hair types.
02:56Your film's about dinosaurs, right?
02:58Right.
02:58Is that a possibility?
02:59Is there a path towards it?
03:00You can't get dino DNA.
03:02Amber, believe it or not, it's very porous.
03:04It doesn't hold DNA.
03:06But if you took advanced genetic engineering, advanced computational models,
03:10you had an avian genomics group to trait engineering, you created synthetic eggs.
03:16I think you'll have dinosaur equivalents in the next hundred years using these tools,
03:20just a more advanced version of these tools.
03:23You're a very impressive nerd, Henry.
03:25If you could bring back any dinosaur, what would you bring back?
03:29The one that's going to get all the tourists is going to be the T-Rex.
03:32Yeah.
03:32It's also going to go very wrong.
03:36Might well escape.
03:40It'll work out in the end.
03:42Would make a really cool movie.
03:43Over some time period, whether that's five years or 20 years, we at Colossal will be able
03:50to engineer nearly anything.
03:52I think the genetic engineering, computational analysis, and the access to compute and more
03:57and more compute will give us the ability to truly create new forms of life.
04:02But that doesn't mean we should.
04:03Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think
04:06if they should.
04:07Our goal is to create de-extinction, to build technologies that can help human health care.
04:13If we get this DNA, millions of lots are saved.
04:16As well as subsidize all those technologies for conservation.
04:20If we can build a company that builds technologies to advance species preservation, then I think
04:26we have done our job.
04:27And I do advise you to start building some 10,000 volt fences just to be on the safe side.
04:33Just to be on the safe side.
04:37Just to be on the safe side.
04:38Just to be on the safe side.
04:38S Entscheidung for the Ass 1920s
04:41Yes.
04:42It does not accept that see happening in the safe space.
04:45If you are a person who has to define life, you can get it.
