Jurassic World: Rebirth screenwriter David Koepp discusses coming back to the series after nearly 30 years, Collider reports. First collaborating with director Steven Spielberg on the original Jurassic Park in 1993 and the first sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997, Koepp stepped away from the series because, as he said,

“I just didn’t have any ideas. I just did two of them, and I feel like I said everything I had to say about dinosaurs.”

While still keeping tabs on the following installments, it wasn’t until 27 years later that the spark returned as Koepp recalled,

“…Steven Spielberg calls and asks if I’d ever want to do another one…so I go, ‘Can we do new characters and new ideas?’…And Steven said, ‘Yeah, let’s just let our imaginations run wild. ‘ And the ideas started to flow, and I was like, this is great.”

Initially worried about being rusty, Koepp found himself fitting back into the sci-fi franchise rather easily:

“When I re-read the books, I was like, ‘Oh, I remember this feeling.’ The books are different in tone than the movie Jurassic Park because Crichton and Spielberg are very different people with different worldviews… I started taking tons of notes, because I was like: It’s all still here.”

Despite wanting to take things in a new direction, Koepp also did not want to erase what had come before, saying,

“… I wanted to respect what occurred in the first six movies, because I hate when you watch a franchise movie and they gaslight you and say, ‘No, that never happened.” Or, ‘That was a timeline…”

Returning to his prehistoric roots also allowed Koepp to finally add in a scene from the original book that had been deleted from the 1993 film:

“The raft scene. I wanted to use it before, but it didn’t fit the structure or the budget…And CG was so new — a T-Rex swimming? In 1992, water was still really difficult to do with CG. Not anymore.”

Jurassic World: Rebirth is now playing in theaters and has grossed over $529 million worldwide as of this writing.