After six films – or two sets of trilogies if you want to look at it another way – it felt like Jurassic Park movies were done once Jurassic World: Dominion finished its run at cinemas last year. From a financial standpoint, you might argue that it would be a no-brainer to make more films. After all, they were almost all hugely successful at the box office. Four of the six, including the most recent three Jurassic World movies, are listed among the top-50-grossing movies of all time, all taking in more than a billion dollars.
But there is, nevertheless, a creative issue. Where do you go with the franchise? How many times do you tell the same story of a dino apocalypse? If audiences weren’t willing to vote with their feet and wallets, there was a sense after Dominion that they would be. It would be surprising to see anyone pick up the franchise for cinema, at least until enough time has passed for a fresh reboot.
Iconic Intellectual Property Will Always Be In Demand
Yet this is an iconic intellectual property, and there is an appetite for the idea of a Jurassic Park universe. So, might we ask whether the franchise would be suited to a television run? The point, as such, is that television can tell a story in a different way, giving characters and storylines more room to breathe.
Of course, the films are not the only media related to the Jurassic Park intellectual property. There are short films, such as Battle at Big Rock, an animated series Camp Cretaceous, Lego animated projects, and a host of games, including Microgaming’s Jurassic Park slots series, which are among the most popular titles at online casinos. However, there has not been a live-action television series, and there do not seem to be concrete plans to make one.
The reason that it could be a good idea is that it could solve the flaw that now blights the franchise – repetition. While one might argue that each film is different, and there are constantly new characters and themes, the plot always boils down to the following: Human hubris takes dinosaur risk for granted, disaster strikes, then a hero or heroine saves the day. Rinse and repeat.
A TV Series Could Have A Slow-burning Plot
The point of a tv series is that it could be a slow burner, introducing storylines, subplots, and narratives that are not possible to squeeze into a couple of hours in a movie. Dinosaurs would, of course, be central to the story, but they do not need to be predictably so. There would certainly be an opportunity to try some different.
An indirect argument for having a Jurassic Park television show is also due to the huge amount of competition among streaming platforms. There is a lot of money to throw at big-budget series, and executives tend to think that familiar intellectual property is more worthwhile than creating new series from scratch. It would cost a lot to make such a series, but the risk appetite is there.
Of course, there is always a chance that audiences don’t like a long, drawn-out series on Jurassic Park. We saw the Lord of the Rings intellectual property, which also stretches across six films when you include the Hobbit trilogy, get its tv airing on Amazon Prime’s Rings of Power. It has divided critics and fans, although it is broadly seen as a success commercially.
But those risks are worth taking, and it feels abundantly clear that a long-form television series would be a lot more interesting than another movie or two. It remains to be seen whether anyone decides they have a story worth telling.
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