The Cancelled Jurassic Park TV Series Picked Up Where The Classic First Film Left Off

These days, "Jurassic Park" is a massive media franchise with several theatrical films and even more to come. In addition to the movies and Michael Crichton's original novels, there have been numerous video games and a popular Netflix animated series, "Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous." What you may not know is that "Camp Cretaceous" wasn't the first time someone tried to turn "Jurassic Park" into a small-screen cartoon. In fact, a much earlier attempt was made in the 1990s right around the time the first "Jurassic Park" movie hit theaters (though it never made it into full production).

For many years, details about this project were kept secret. However, old pitch decks, story treatments, and concept art have leaked out bit by bit, published by outlets like Jurassic Outpost. The show, which had a working title of "Escape from Jurassic Park," was ambitious to say the least, and it's not hard to see why it never made it to the screen. However, it's also a fascinating "what if?" to look back on now, especially given how enormous the rest of the property has become.

Spearheaded by '80s cartoon veteran Will Meugniot and artist William Stout, among others, the show would have picked up right after the end of "Jurassic Park" and featured many of the same characters (all while expanding the story in various ways). Certain aspects of it, pulled from Crichton's books, were incorporated into later "Jurassic" films, such as the influence of InGen rival BioSyn and the escape of many dinosaurs to the mainland.

According to William Stout, who was a key member of the creative team behind "Escape from Jurassic Park" (and claims to possess an unreleased trailer for the show), Universal Cartoon Studios was aiming to create an animated series that broke the barriers of cartoons at the time. It would have been easy to make a tie-in show for kids meant to sell toys and cash in on the immense success of the original "Jurassic Park." The franchise already had a huge merchandising arm, after all, and that was basically the model for the adventure-movie-to-cartoon-pipeline of the '80s and early '90s.

Instead, the goal was to make a show that appealed to adult audiences as well as children, blending the "graphic novel look" of traditional animation with "quite a bit of CG animation," , according to Stout. The series would have also aired in a primetime slot, further cementing its intention to capture a broad audience.

Even today, it's tough to find prominent animated series geared toward adult audiences outside of streaming. The notion of a primetime, all-ages "Jurassic Park" TV series in the '90s would have been incredibly ambitious. At the same time, the fact it was animated would have helped address certain problems like recasting the stars of the original movie and bringing its high-concept visuals to life. In the end, it's not hard to see why "Escape from Jurassic Park" didn't get made, but it's still a shame, given how influential it could have been.

According to the story treatment reported by Jurassic Outpost, the first season of "Escape from Jurassic Park" would have seen BioSyn, the rival of John Hammond's InGen that tries to steal his dinosaur DNA samples in the original movie, creating its own dino theme park. "DinoWorld" would have been very similar to Jurassic Park, and you could also easily draw comparisons to Jurassic World from the second film trilogy.

Of course, this eventually leads to an outbreak of dinosaurs — both species from the movie "Jurassic Park" and new ones — in South America, leading to widespread chaos. Major characters like Hammond, Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcolm, and Alan Grant would have also appeared (though given their star power of their original actors, they likely would have been recast with less expensive voice talent).

Will Meugniot, whom Universal brought on to develop the series, cut his teeth on major '80s cartoons like "The Real Ghostbusters," "G.I. Joe," and "Captain Planet," so he brought a lot of experience to the project. That and a compelling concept weren't enough to push the show through, however. While "Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous" became a huge success decades later, it's a pretty standard animated kids' show, as opposed to the expansive, primetime series that "Escape from Jurassic Park" was intended to be.