Jurassic World Rebirth's Mutant Dinosaur Has An Official (And Ridiculous) Name

Universal Pictures didn't waste a lot of time reviving the "Jurassic" franchise following the release of 2022's "Jurassic World Dominion," which was billed as something of a conclusion at the time. While that may have finished a trilogy, we are indeed getting more dinosaurs on the big screen. This summer will see the release of director Gareth Edwards' "Jurassic World Rebirth," which will feature new dinosaurs in a new location with entirely new characters. And now we know just a little bit more about one key dino in the movie ... and it raises some questions.

The folks at Empire Magazine recently revealed two different covers for the latest issue, both of which are focused on "Jurassic World Rebirth." One of them features Scarlett Johansson's Zora Bennett, while the other features an artistic rendering by Tim McDonagh of the mysterious mutant dinosaur that was featured in the first "Rebirth" trailer. More than that, Empire also confirmed that this dinosaur has a name. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Distortus Rex.

That image alone offers our best look yet at the creature's face, which has been largely obscured in the footage that has been released. Undoubtedly, this will be abbreviated to D-rex in the future but this name warrants discussion. For one, Distortus Rex is a ridiculous name, no two ways about it. But heading into the seventh movie in this franchise, this feels like it could be the right kind of ridiculous, unlike that giant locust bit in "Dominion." Just one man's opinion, but I'm all for more mutant dinos and fewer big bugs in these movies.

Does the name Distortus Rex tell us anything about the creature? Not really, but "distortus" has the root word distort. This mutant has been rumored to be a failed attempt at making T-rex. So a "distorted T-rex" might be one way to look at it, but that's purely speculative at this point.

"Some Rancor went in there, some H.R. Giger went in there, a little T-Rex went in there," Edwards previously said of the mutant dinosaur, aka the D-rex, in "Jurassic World Rebirth." It's clear that the filmmakers are being cagey about the creature but it's also evidently going to play a big part in the movie. The questions we're left with now relate more to the how and the why of this mutant dinosaur, more than the what.

We know for sure that "Rebirth" is going to take place at the research facility for the original Jurassic Park. This is not Isla Nublar, where the first park was, nor is it Isla Sorna, aka Site B where "The Lost World" and "Jurassic Park III" took place. This is a new island we've never seen. More importantly, this facility is where the initial experiments happened to figure out how to make dinosaurs exist in the first place. Naturally, there were going to be some missteps along the way. The D-rex appears to be one such misstep, and a dangerous one at that.

If any of this seems like jumping the shark, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But "Jurassic World" introduced the idea of hybrids with the Indominus Rex, which has since been explored a fair amount elsewhere in the franchise. Even the original movie saw the dinosaurs able to reproduce because of frog DNA that the scientists didn't account for. So, who knows what happens in genetics labs when experiments go awry as it relates to living things? The biggest question we're left with right now is what other horrors exist on that island that we haven't seen yet?

David Koepp ("Jurassic Park") returned to pen the screenplay for the latest installment. The cast also includes Mahershala Ali ("Moonlight"), Jonathan Bailey ("Wicked"), Rupert Friend ("Obi-Wan Kenobi"), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo ("6 Underground"), Luna Blaise ("Manifest"), David Iacono ("Dead Boy Detectives"), Philippine Velge ("The Serpent Queen"), Bechir Sylvain ("Claws"), and Ed Skrein ("Deadpool).

"Jurassic World Rebirth" hits theaters on July 2, 2025.