Why Fox Canceled Steven Spielberg's Sci-Fi Series Terra Nova

The early 2010s were filled with high-concept genre shows made in the wake of the monumental medium-changing success of "Lost." Shows like "FlashForward," "Revolution," or "The Event" had ambitious concepts and big mysteries but failed to capture the essence of what made "Lost" successful — hint, it wasn't just the mysteries.

One show from that wave was "Terra Nova." There were many reasons to believe this show would be a big hit. The cast included Stephen Lang, hot off the astonishing success of James Cameron's first "Avatar" movie. It boasted having none other than Steven Spielberg as an executive producer. Oh, and it was a TV show about people going back in time and battling dinosaurs.

That's right. Steven "I directed 'Jurassic Park' and changed blockbuster cinema forever" Spielberg executive produced a TV show about dinosaurs. Sure-fire hit, right? The CGI was pretty good, it had Carnotaurus eating people alive, and Stephen Lang was not even hiding the fact that he is literally just doing Colonel Miles Quaritch from "Avatar" again — same motivation, personality, the whole package.

Unfortunately, "Terra Nova" joined the many, many TV shows that only lasted one season (but it was nowhere near the best one-season shows). The reason is surprising to absolutely no one — barely anyone watched the show, and it was expensive as hell to produce.

"Terra Nova" had a budget the size of a dinosaur-killing meteor, with the pilot costing around $20 million (nearly $30 million today) and ratings that dropped as fast as the dinosaurs did when the meteor struck. "It's a debacle. The cost of the show is kind of a moving target," a source close to the production told TheWrap (via Reuters) at the time of the show's cancelation. "They're down in Australia building sets like it's going to be the next 'Jurassic Park.'"

Unsurprisingly for a big production that ended up failing with audiences, "Terra Nova" also had problems behind the scenes. The show had a revolving door of creatives, with writers, directors, and showrunners changing before the cameras finally rolled. Reportedly, Kevin Bacon and Kyle Chandler were approached to star, but they passed (according to TheWrap).

By the time "Terra Nova" finally made it to air, it was a strange and confusing show. Sure, it featured dinosaurs (the biggest draw), and an interesting story of humanity messing up Earth so much they decided not to go to Mars but instead. But it was also an awkwardly written family drama with a big focus on teen romance stories.

Sure, there was still the draw of a Spielberg-produced show, but that wasn't that uncommon. After all, Spielberg also produced the underwhelming found-footage action horror TV show "The River," the ambitious but narratively underwhelming "Falling Skies" (which is getting a second life on Max now), the horrible "Minority Report" TV show, and much more.

Watching "Terra Nova" in 2025, the CG doesn't look that good, but it is hard not to admire the boldness of the show to tackle one of the hardest stories to crack, and on a smaller budget. After all, the only dinosaur movies that have actually been hits have the word "Jurassic" in the title (no, we're not counting the MonsterVerse movies). Still, the show had an impressive cast that went on to do great things. In addition to Lang, who returned to "Avatar" to play the same character even after death, there was also Jason O'Mara, who would go on to play Batman in animated movies for nearly a decade, and Naomi Scott pre-"Power Rangers" and "Smile 2."