Why Jurassic World Rebirth screenwriter David Koepp doesn't like a world ‘too big'
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So begins David Koepp's script to 1993's Jurassic Park. Like much of Koepp's writing, it is crisply terse and intensely visual. It does not tell the director – in this case Steven Spielberg – where to put the camera, but it nearly does.
'I asked Steven before we started: 'What are the limitations about what I can write?'' Koepp recalls. 'CGI hadn't really been invented yet. He said: 'Only your imagination.''
In the 32 years since penning the adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel, Koepp has established himself as one of Hollywood's top screenwriters, not through the boundlessness of his imagination but by his expertise in limiting it.
Koepp is the master of the 'bottle' movie – films hemmed in by a single location or condensed time frame. From David Fincher's Panic Room (2002) to Steven Soderbergh's Presence (2024), he excels at corralling stories into uncluttered movie narratives.
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