Author's mythical dinosaur world comes to TV
By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
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| "Dinotopia," the epic story of a lost continent where dinosaurs and humans live together, will be brought to life as a six-hour miniseries.
. . . 'Dinotopia' • May 12-14 (times to be announced) Gannett News Service |
Gurney lives in a TV-free home in small-town New York. That may have been one reason he created the fanciful "Dinotopia" books.
"I thought to myself, 'Here is something that will never happen in a live-action film,' " Gurney recalls. "It will only be in a book."
Then again, he didn't know Robert Halmi Sr., who likes to produce epic miniseries. Halmi's "Dinotopia" airs in three episodes May 12-14 on ABC.
"It's a megaseries," Halmi says. "To get the audience back, you need ... something spectacular."
Halmi says he spent $85 million, creating a mythical world in which dinosaurs fly, talk and interact with humans.
That meant actors often worked with a blue-screen process that added computer images later.
"A lot of our time was in a big, blue room in the studio," says Katie Carr, one of the stars. "I was really curious about what it would look like when we were done."
Before "Dinotopia," Carr had worked with human icons, including Vanessa Redgrave (in "Mrs. Dalloway") and Albert Finney ("A Rather English Marriage"). Now, she was talking to — and even fighting with — dinosaurs.
"I'm literally kicking and screaming at nothing and bouncing against the wall," she says.
"Then the director says do it again. Of course, that made it easier to act like I was angry."
Mostly, her character — Marian, the gorgeous daughter of the mayor of Waterfall City — is supposed to be serene. That fits Gurney's original, mythic vision.
"I had worked as an illustrator for National Geographic, painting actual lost cities," Gurney says. "But I realized I could paint scenes of a city on a waterfall or dinosaurs marching with people."
Soon, he was connecting his make-believe cities on a map, envisioning a Utopian society.
As a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, Gurney set his story in the 1860s. A father and son are shipwrecked, then find the new world.
That became a best seller in 1992. Hollywood beckoned, despite Gurney's misgivings.
Screenwriter Simon Moore ("Gulliver's Travels") threw out most of the story in the "Dinotopia" books and started over. Now the setting is contemporary.
Most of the series was filmed in a London studio, but some scenes were shot in Thailand, South America and Arizona.
