Fox is aiming to bring dinosaurs back to the smallscreen and Steven Spielberg back to the land of dinosaurs all at the same time. News broke last week that Spielberg and Peter Chernin are in negotiations to be a part of Fox's new and ambitious Dino-drama series Terra Nova. The series, which hasn't even gone to pilot yet, would follow a family from 100 years in the future as they time travel back in time to 150 million years in the past. Sound familiar? Critics are claiming Terra Nova is nothing more than a ripoff of the 1974 series (and 2009 Will Ferrell remake) Land of the Lost.
The series is said to involve such elaborate sets and FX shots that Fox is considering greenlighting the project without a pilot order first. By going straight to series they'll avoid having to build expensive sets for the pilot that would then just be abandoned or left unused until the show was picked up as a series. This way nothing would go to waste and audiences would get to see Terra Nova sooner.
The concept for Terra Nova was brought to life by British writer Kelly Marcel, with a script co-written with Craig Silverstein. Marcel was shopping the project around to British networks when manager-producer Aaron Kaplan convinced him to bring the project across the pond. If the project gets the greenlight, Spielberg and Chernin would executive produce, bringing Spielberg back to the world of dinosaurs for the first time since 1993's Jurassic Park and 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Only one fear remains...Fox hasn't exactly become well known for handling it's sci-fi properties well. The network has too often either expected too much of their genre programming and then bailed on it at the first signs of lower than typical ratings, or they have fluttered out of the gate, giving poor marketing and pre-empting episodes too often to give the show a chance at success. So the big question becomes can Fox actually stand behind this show long enough to allow it to succeed, and then stick with it? So while I can't wait to see this series, if it get's the green light, I'm not as optimistic about the fact that it will be on Fox.
Source: Variety
They'll just dump it afterwards like what they did with Dollhouse…