Cool Concept Art For a JURASSIC PARK Animated Series That Never Happened
Did you know that Jurassic Park was supposed to spawn an animated TV series? I had no clue, but thanks to artist William Stout, we know have an idea of what the show was supposed to be like and how it would have looked.
io9 points us to Stout's blog, where he explains how the show nearly came to be:
Upon the success of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movie, all kinds of ancillary projects abounded: toys, games, novelties, apparel, etc.
Towards the end of all of this merchandising I got a call from artist Will Meugniot, asking if I’d be interested in designing a Jurassic Park animated series. This was not going to be a kiddy show (although kids of all ages, including myself, could enjoy it). They wanted the show to be a mature prime time series with top writers and state-of-the-art television animation augmented with quite a bit of CG animation. Universal Cartoon Studios wanted a “graphic novel look” to the series. I came in, showed my portfolio and was hired.
We made a trailer to communicate the look and feel of the series, also showing how we would combine computer animation with traditional animation. All we needed was Spielberg’s approval.
I heard through the grapevine that he never bothered to watch what we had done. By that time the word was out that he was burnt out on Jurassic Park merchandising and all of the film’s commercial exploitation. So, it never got made.
What a bummer. A "mature prime time series" based on Jurassic Park? That sounds so cool! This could have been the Batman: The Animated Series of the Jurassic franchise. Take a look at some of the concept art Stout created for the series, which you can purchase from his site.