| Teleplay: | Simon Moore |
| Director: | Marco Brambilla |
| Starring: | David Thewlis Katie Carr Jim Carter Alice Krige Tyron Leitso Wentworth Miller Colin Salmon Stuart Wilson |
| Composer: | Trevor Jones |
| Country: | United States United Kingdom Germany |
| Language: | English |
| Num Episodes: | 3 |
| Executive Producer: | Robert Halmi Sr. Robert Halmi Jr. |
| Producer: | Dusty Symonds William P. Cartlidge |
| Editor: | Oral Norrie Ottey |
| Cinematography: | Tony Pierce-Roberts |
| Camera: | John Bailie |
| Runtime: | 250 minutes (total) |
| Company: | Mat 1 Productions Hallmark Entertainment |
| Channel: | ABC (United States) RTL (Germany) |
Dinotopia is a television miniseries produced by Hallmark Entertainment in association with RTL Television Germany. It is based on the Dinotopia book series by James Gurney, that depicts a fictional utopia in which sapient dinosaurs and humans coexist. The miniseries serves as a sequel to the Dinotopia books, Dinotopia (1992) and Dinotopia: The World Beneath (1995). The main characters of the story are two American teenage boys from contemporary times (unlike the 19th century castaways in the books—the film thus loses some of the classicism of the original books).[1] The boys' father's plane crashes into the sea and they get stranded on Dinotopia, where they must adjust to a new society. The story in the film contains references to many of the characters in the book series, with some of their descendants occupying key roles in the plot. The original score was composed by Trevor Jones. This score is performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Geoffrey Alexander. The miniseries premiered as installments of The Wonderful World of Disney from May 12–14, 2002 on ABC. It received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special. It was soon followed by a television series.
A pair of teenage half-brothers, Karl and David Scott, are on a flight with their father Frank on his private plane when Karl takes over the controls, so his father can fall asleep. After flying into a storm, Karl struggles, causing Frank to retake control before it crashes into the ocean. Frank saves his sons, but has trouble escaping the crashed plane as his seatbelt fails to release. Karl and David wash up on the shore of a large uncharted island. Looking for help, Karl and David meet a man named Cyrus Crabb who informs them that they are in Dinotopia, a hidden civilization where human beings and dinosaurs co-exist peacefully. Crabb leads the boys to a village, where the boys are surprised to see that they are wearing clothes from different cultures in different time periods. There, they witness a young Dinotopian woman, Marion Waldo, pacify a Ankylosaurus with a toothache. The two boys befriend her and hitch a Brachiosaur "bus" ride to Waterfall City. During the journey, the "Brachs" become distressed by an unseen presence. Marion, David, Karl and the Brach bus conductor investigate the forest nearby and find Tyrannosaurus footprints. Marion is unsettled by this, as Tyrannosaurus do not usually hunt in packs. She begins to sense a strange unbalance, after discovering the destroyed remains of a Dinotopian village. For the Brachs's safety, the group spends the night in the village. Later in the night, the group is attacked by the raiding Tyrannosaurus pack. Karl, David and Marion run for their lives, as the Tyrannosaurus hunt them down. Marion trips and falls, and is nearly killed by a Tyrannosaurus when a group of Skybax riders, humans riding on Quetzalcoatlus, distract and scare away the Tyrannosaurus. The Skybax squadron leader, Oonu, offers to escort the Brachs to Waterfall.
In fact, some of the dinosaurs, notably a neurotic but friendly Stenonychosaurus named Zipeau, possess human intelligence and speak perfect English. Among the many rules in Dinotopia is the edict that outsiders are never allowed to leave. Only David whole-heartedly wants to stay. Karl, however, traumatized and embittered by his father's apparent drowning and the Dinotopian’s lack of sympathy, refuses to acclimate.
As Karl and David prepare to take their places in their new surroundings, both boys develop a strong bond with young Marion, who is on the verge of becoming a "matriarch" of the Dinotopian society. Legend has it that their ancestors lived in an underworld that was lit by sunstones. Cyrus has been stealing artifacts and books to try and find a way off the island. Zipeau discovers all the stolen items, but Cyrus knocks him out and throws him in a water canal. Meanwhile, Karl finds a Dino egg and gets sent on a mission by himself. The sun-stones keep mysteriously breaking which causes the dinos to attack. David needs to learn to conquer his fears. Unfortunately, the incursion of vicious carnivores, not to mention an unanticipated human villain, threaten to destroy Dinotopia and everyone living there.
Plans for a film based on Dinotopia were previously rejected due to the expense of creating a world populated by both humans and dinosaurs. Both Columbia Pictures and Disney at one time made the attempt, but both studios abandoned the idea, with Disney opting to make its own homegrown film, Dinosaur in 2000. Hallmark Entertainment CEO Robert Halmi Sr. then purchased the rights after having read the books.
Halmi was willing to spend $80 million on the film, despite the lukewarm performance of his previous fantasy miniseries, The Tenth Kingdom.[2] ABC had so much confidence in the miniseries that they began shooting episodes of the spin-off television series before the miniseries had aired.[3]
More than 75% of the scenes in the miniseries required visual effects, many of which required interaction between the live-action human actors and the animatronic or computer-animated dinosaurs. The animated dinosaurs were created by a London-based company, Framestore CFC, who also did the CGI work for the Walking with Dinosaurs series. The series also used other visual effects techniques such as digital set extensions. Many of the sets were only partially built, the rest being done digitally, to create the enormous buildings used by both dinosaurs and humans in the film. Even so, the actual set for Waterfall City, Dinotopia's capital, took up five-and-a-half acres of the back lot of England's Pinewood Studios. Jim Henson's Creature Shop provided the animatronic dinosaurs.
Although Dinotopia started out as a TV miniseries, later all the parts were combined and put on DVD as one film, except in the UK, where the mini-series was put onto discs as separate episodes.