Dinos Coming to Big and Small Screens

What is going on with the Jurassic Park franchise? For the past decade rumors have circulated about a fourth installment of the dinosaurs-gone-wild series, and for every report that a sequel is in the works there is another denying such plans. The latest episode involved a daily shooting schedule at Universal Studios that said Jurassic Park 4 was filming on several stages, though studio spokespeople have said this was not true.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the feature films, the Jurassic Park stories are continuing in other venues. Last year saw the debut of the poorly-executed Jurassic Park: Redemption comic series, and Telltale Games is working on an adventure game that will return players to the doomed theme park. There's already a fair amount of buzz around the game, especially since it won't be another dinosaur shoot-em-up like so many others.

Famed director and producer Steven Spielberg is still involved in bringing dinosaurs to the screen, too. He, among others, is an executive producer for the forthcoming TV series Terra Nova, a show about a group of humans hoping to save humanity from ecological disaster by settling 85 million years in the past. The show will most definitely feature dinosaurs, although some of the prehistoric cast will be entirely new. On a recent publicity tour, series producer Brannon Braga said, "we have dinosaurs we know existed from the fossil record but you get to make up your own dinosaurs as well."

These won't be the only dinosaurs to stomp across the screen in the near future. The Discovery Channel series Reign of the Dinosaurs is set to debut this year, and in 2012 Walking With Dinosaurs 3D will take audiences back to the Mesozoic. Jurassic Park 4 or no, dinosaur fans certainly have a lot to look forward to in the next year.

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.