Credit: Universal PicturesDo you remember one of the taglines for Jurassic Park (1993)? “If it isn’t Jurassic Park, it’s extinct.” Well, it turns out that’s not entirely true.
The Jurassic franchise is no stranger to animated shows, but before the CG-animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020 — 2022) came along on Netflix, they were as hard to come by as fossilized dinosaur DNA (here in the real world, that is).
Most fans are aware of the Topps Jurassic Park comic book series that came and went in the ’90s (although, while technically “animated,” it doesn’t count), but the animated television series Escape from Jurassic Park has become lost in the sands of time, a bit like a dinosaur.
Following the release of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film, Amblin Entertainment revealed that a high-budget, “mature prime time” animated series based on the ground-breaking sci-fi blockbuster film was in development and awaiting the acclaimed director’s go-ahead.
With a first season outlined to have a standard 23 episodes, Universal Animation Studios‘ Escape from Jurassic Park would have featured state-of-the-art cartoon animation, as seen in countless shows of that era, with some then-novelty CGI thrown in.
The show would have revolved around John Hammond trying to open Jurassic Park to the world despite the catastrophic failure seen in the 1993 film. At the time, Jeff Segal, president of Universal Cartoon Studios, said, “It [Escape] would essentially pick up from the closing moments of the movie and it would continue the story in a very dramatic way. The intention would be to continue with the primary characters and also introduce new characters.”
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Escape would have also focused on InGen’s rival company, Biosyn — the main antagonists in Jurassic World Dominion (2022) — and their plans to open their own theme park in Brazil, which would have seen dinosaurs escape onto the mainland. Sound familiar?
Before you start screaming “Jurassic World Dominion!“, dinosaurs on the mainland are nothing new. The Topps comics featured these storylines long before The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) saw a T-Rex tear up San Diego or before Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) unleashed them into the North American wilderness.
But the concept was first positioned in Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel Jurassic Park (1990), in which some species of InGen’s genetically engineered dinosaurs start to appear in the jungles of Costa Rica after they’ve managed to escape Isla Nublar by boat.
However, seeing this explored in a television series would have been exciting. But project never saw the light of day. According to Wikipedia, director Steven Spielberg “had grown tired of the massive promotion and merchandise revolving around the [1993] film” and ultimately decided against the show.
It’s a shame we’ll never see the animated series, but some of its ideas aren’t entirely extinct. Or, to quote The Lost World, “something has survived.”
Not only did a version of the park end up opening to the public in Jurassic World (2015), and not only did dinosaurs end up escaping onto the mainland in Fallen Kingdom, but we now have the upcoming video game “Jurassic Park: Survival” (TBA) — a revival of the 2000s game of the same name that never made it to release — which follows on directly from the original 1993 film, just as Escape was intended to do.
There’s also the upcoming film Jurassic World Rebirth (2025), which hits theaters on July 2.
Would you like to see Escape From Jurassic Park brought back from extinction? Let us know in the comments!