Scarlett visited the TODAY Show and Hoda & Jenna this morning to talk about The Outset, directing her first film, and Jurassic World Rebirth.

EMPIRE – The Jurassic franchise has been through all kinds of evolutions already. There was Spielberg’s classic original Jurassic Park, which led to The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. And then in 2015 began the Jurassic World trilogy, giving us a fully-fledged dinosaur theme park before letting the pre-historic beasts loose on the world. Now, Jurassic is about to be reborn – quite literally, with Jurassic World Rebirth ready to bare its teeth. This time, Godzilla and Monsters director Gareth Edwards is putting his scaly-beast expertise to good use, working from a script by original Park scribe David Koepp – ready to take the saga back to the source.

“It goes back to what I loved about the original,” Edwards tells Empire in our Andor Season 2 issue, “with an embarrassment of riches of different set-piece-type scenarios and tense, fun action moments. There were a lot of opportunities as a filmmaker to have a lot of fun and try and play games with the audience.” Set give years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, it continues the dinos-in-the-wild premise established across that trilogy, while beginning “a whole new chapter in the timeline of Jurassic”.

While it’ll be packed with prehistoric beasts (“there are certain dinosaurs it would be a crime against cinema not to include,” notes Edwards), the new human lead is Scarlett Johansson – whose operative Zora Bennett is leading an epic dino-DNA hunt. “She’s looking for meaning in her life after leaving the military,” Edwards teases of her role, “and this opportunity comes along where [after it] basically she’d never have to work again. But through that journey, she starts to question the ethical rights and wrongs of what they’re doing.” You’re saying she was so preoccupied with whether or not she could, she didn’t stop to think if she should? Buckle up for some classic Jurassic.

DEADLINE – EXCLUSIVE: Amazon MGM Studios and Scott Stuber have acquired The Girl in the Lake, a proposal for an adult mystery thriller novel by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver. Oliver will write the script for a film that will be developed for United Artists. Scarlett Johansson is eyeing this to star as the title character, subject to script, Deadline hears.

Stuber and Nick Nesbitt will produce along with Johansson and Jonathan Lia, through These Pictures, and Marc Resteghini (Young Sherlock) through Jack Tar Pictures. Oliver will also serve as executive producer.

The logline is being kept under wraps but when Verve held the auction, the novel was being described as What Lies Beneath meets The Sixth Sense. This was a high-end screen deal and a publishing auction is in the offing. Oliver’s making the jump to an adult thriller after writing YA novels that include Panic; the Delirium trilogy Delirium, Pandemonium and Requiem; and Before I Fall, which was adapted into a film in 2017. Panic was also turned into a series by Amazon Studios.

Aside from being one of Stuber’s first big projects since the former Netflix Head of Film committed to revive the UA label under the Amazon MGM umbrella, The Girl in the Lake reunites him with Johansson after their work together on the Oscar-nominated films Marriage Story and In Good Company.

Verve, Stephen Barbara at Inkwell Management, Howie Sanders at Anonymous Content and Jamie Feldman represent Oliver. Johansson is with CAA and Yorn Levine Barnes.

Resteghini, who has an overall television and first-look film deal at Amazon MGM, oversaw Oliver’s series Panic when he ran TV development for the studio.

Stuber is currently producing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein for Netflix, and Deliver Me From Nowhere, the Scott Cooper-directed drama that stars The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen as the iconic singer hit an existential crossroads and turned it into the seminal album Nebraska. That film is for 20th Century Studios and Disney.

Nearly 2000 HD captures from Fly Me to the Moon have been added into the photo gallery. The film is currently available to purchase digitally.