'Terra Nova' dinosaur series on Fox from Spielberg

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Seriously, does anyone think this is gonna last more than a single half-season??

Like Fringe, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, and Human Target it could well be renewed for a second season. Getting a third season may be tougher, though, unless it gets - and keeps - a good timeslot, perhaps with a strong lead-in.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Scheduling is one thing, but if as mentioned before the writing (and the acting) sucks, then it's a dodo.

The premise is barely plausible, but it does have potential. And humanity would 20,000,000 years before the asteroid destroys their new civilization.

Probably longer than we have now.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Re: 'Terra Nova' budget & tentative programming start

The production price? A cool $4 million an episode: "This thing is going to be huge. It's going to take an enormous production commitment," Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly told the press.

Terra Nova is scheduled to come out midseason, but beyond that Fox is being cagey. "We don't want to tie it into a date. ... We want to do this show right," said Reilly.

http://scifiwire.com/2010/05/12-things-we-know-about-s.php

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Maybe the bad guys are time traveling alien Nazis!

Maybe the dinosaurs are Nazis!

*Tries imagining a brontosaurus giving a Hitler salute to a T-Rex. Both have swastikas tattoos on them.*

The Velociraptors are the Nazis.

I think the strategy for this series is going to be Avatar-on-TV: eye-popping visuals (as good as you can expect from a TV budget) crossed with a dipply treehugger message we can all get behind. Could work.

 

[The Comedian]

Re: 'Terra Nova' budget & tentative programming start

The production price? A cool $4 million an episode: "This thing is going to be huge. It's going to take an enormous production commitment," Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly told the press.

Terra Nova is scheduled to come out midseason, but beyond that Fox is being cagey. "We don't want to tie it into a date. ... We want to do this show right," said Reilly.

http://scifiwire.com/2010/05/12-things-we-know-about-s.php

(River)
They want it alive when they cancel it.
(/River)

 

[stj]

A dippy treehugger message wasn't what made Avatar work. So if that's what Terra Nova is, it'll fail.

Trying to build a new civilization should be a situtation where people have to make choices. That's drama. Discovering whether our heroes' secrets are discovered is not drama, but soap. Discovering what the villainous plot is and who the villainous villains plotting are is melodrama. Why waste $4 megabucks per episode on a dragged out crime melodrama? The Event will probably fail epically enough at that, and we wouldn't need another one to flop the same way.

 

[Checkmate]

So you guys are judging a series when absolutely nothing other than "it's gonna have dinosaurs" is known?

Fascinating.

 

[The Wormhole]

So you guys are judging a series when absolutely nothing other than "it's gonna have dinosaurs" is known?

Fascinating.

It's the internet, pre-judging is to be expected. I've already decided the cast consists of talentless nobodies who should go back to doing commercials.

Yeah, that's right. I do not know who is in the cast, yet I've given my opinion of them.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

A dippy treehugger message wasn't what made Avatar work. So if that's what Terra Nova is, it'll fail.

The visuals is what made Avatar work; the story and characters are far less important. TV won't permit visuals to do quite as much heavy lifting vs. a big budget movie, but it's the same idea if not the same proportion. Terra Nova just needs to give us better visuals than we're used to on TV, and acceptable characters and plotline, and it should do just fine.

As for the theme, we all know that Hollywood is vastly more likely to go the treehugger route than to take the side of the evil corporate mercs, though wouldn't that be an interesting creative challenge/nice change of pace? So I'm already expecting there to be some Evil Corporation(TM) behind the inevitable conspiracy plotline, though hopefully without someone as groanably cliched as Sgt. Scarface.

Why waste $4 megabucks per episode on a dragged out crime melodrama?

Gives you something to write about when you run out of episodic ideas. This will be true of both Terra Nova and The Event, since both appear to have conspiracy plot arcs.

Also, I doubt the networks are quite ready to give up on their quixotic quest to create the next Lost, despite years of failure.

So you guys are judging a series when absolutely nothing other than "it's gonna have dinosaurs" is known?

Fascinating.

What else are we going to discuss besides what little is known about it? If you don't want to discuss a show, that's not even going to debut this year, based on very preliminary info, then this is not the thread for you.

My gut reaction is: Spielberg + dinos on TV = BIG FAT HIT! But a negative gut reaction is just as likely to be valid. My positive gut reactions have a bad habit of turning out to be wrong. Maybe I should slam this show just to not jinx it.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Regardless of who is behind it, or who is in it, or what the visuals are like, if the plot sucks, the show will suck.

I'm not going to expect anything fantastic out of this for the very simple reason that everything I have liked on Fox has been prematurely cancelled. If I don't like it, it won't be cancelled

 

[Greg Cox]

A dinosaur show would require one hell of a budget. That could be an obstacle for the show.

PRIMEVAL has managed for four seasons . . . .

 

[Checkmate]

So you guys are judging a series when absolutely nothing other than "it's gonna have dinosaurs" is known?

Fascinating.

What else are we going to discuss besides what little is known about it? If you don't want to discuss a show, that's not even going to debut this year, based on very preliminary info, then this is not the thread for you.

There's a difference between discussing a show and considering possibilities, and flat out condemning it.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

'Fringe' Pilot Director Heads To 'Terra Nova'

now it has writer/director/producer Alex Graves to give it another edge.

Graves directed the then much-hyped episode of "Fringe," and with "Terra Nova" being an even more reportedly high-concept series, one can expect this pilot to be talked about even mnore.

No casting for the series has been announced.

Jun-1-2010
http://www.airlockalpha.com/node/7491

 

[Temis the Vorta]

So you guys are judging a series when absolutely nothing other than "it's gonna have dinosaurs" is known?

Fascinating.

What else are we going to discuss besides what little is known about it? If you don't want to discuss a show, that's not even going to debut this year, based on very preliminary info, then this is not the thread for you.

There's a difference between discussing a show and considering possibilities, and flat out condemning it.

There's a difference but not an important one. We know next to nothing, so anything positive that might be said is no more valid than anything negative. Just let people yak, you can't stop em anyway.

At this point, I'm waiting to hear about casting. That's what this show will live or die on. That and the SFX, which I expect should be pretty good by TV standards.

 

[wamdue]

A dinosaur show would require one hell of a budget. That could be an obstacle for the show.

PRIMEVAL has managed for four seasons . . . .

um, that really only tells half the story.

Primeval aired for 3 series on ITV 1, ITV in there wisdom then axed it.

Months later it was annouced that BBC WorldWide, had done a deal with ITV to save the show, meaning that it would conitnue to air on BBCAm, and now air on BBC WW Pay TV channel "Watch" as well as ITV, German channel Pro7 continues to co produce the show as it has from S1.

To say that Primeval has lasted 4 series, is only telling a very small part of the story.

Also Primeval was not just about dinosaurs, it featured other CGIs creatuers, and even predators from the future.

 

[AviTrek]

A dinosaur show would require one hell of a budget. That could be an obstacle for the show.

PRIMEVAL has managed for four seasons . . . .

um, that really only tells half the story.

Primeval aired for 3 series on ITV 1, ITV in there wisdom then axed it.

Months later it was annouced that BBC WorldWide, had done a deal with ITV to save the show, meaning that it would conitnue to air on BBCAm, and now air on BBC WW Pay TV channel "Watch" as well as ITV, German channel Pro7 continues to co produce the show as it has from S1.

To say that Primeval has lasted 4 series, is only telling a very small part of the story.

Also Primeval was not just about dinosaurs, it featured other CGIs creatuers, and even predators from the future.

So Primeval lasted 3 seasons on ITV before needing to make extra funding deals. What's your point?

 

[wamdue]

PRIMEVAL has managed for four seasons . . . .

um, that really only tells half the story.

Primeval aired for 3 series on ITV 1, ITV in there wisdom then axed it.

Months later it was annouced that BBC WorldWide, had done a deal with ITV to save the show, meaning that it would conitnue to air on BBCAm, and now air on BBC WW Pay TV channel "Watch" as well as ITV, German channel Pro7 continues to co produce the show as it has from S1.

To say that Primeval has lasted 4 series, is only telling a very small part of the story.

Also Primeval was not just about dinosaurs, it featured other CGIs creatuers, and even predators from the future.

So Primeval lasted 3 seasons on ITV before needing to make extra funding deals. What's your point?

that the survival of Primeval is not as easy as Greg Cox made it seem, and it was at one point axed, before its 4th series.

 

[AviTrek]

um, that really only tells half the story.

Primeval aired for 3 series on ITV 1, ITV in there wisdom then axed it.

Months later it was annouced that BBC WorldWide, had done a deal with ITV to save the show, meaning that it would conitnue to air on BBCAm, and now air on BBC WW Pay TV channel "Watch" as well as ITV, German channel Pro7 continues to co produce the show as it has from S1.

To say that Primeval has lasted 4 series, is only telling a very small part of the story.

Also Primeval was not just about dinosaurs, it featured other CGIs creatuers, and even predators from the future.

So Primeval lasted 3 seasons on ITV before needing to make extra funding deals. What's your point?

that the survival of Primeval is not as easy as Greg Cox made it seem, and it was at one point axed, before its 4th series.

Either way it got 3 seasons before it's first cancellation, and that's two more than Terra Nova has right now.

 

[wamdue]

So Primeval lasted 3 seasons on ITV before needing to make extra funding deals. What's your point?

that the survival of Primeval is not as easy as Greg Cox made it seem, and it was at one point axed, before its 4th series.

Either way it got 3 seasons before it's first cancellation, and that's two more than Terra Nova has right now.

ture enough, maybe Terra Nova should look into some high profile international co-productions, to get some money coming in.

Dare I say it, they could look into the New Corp empire, Sky in the UK, for example.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

International partners wouldn't hurt, but Fox has much deeper pockets than ITV.