Primitive War Was Rejected By Hollywood – The Director Made His Wild Dinosaur War Movie Anyway [Exclusive Interview]

"I always just say go big or go home." Those are the words of director Luke Sparke. It's also something a lot of people say. Then again, few people ever put their money where their mouth is quite like Sparke did when he made "Primitive War." To say that he went big with his absolutely bonkers, overstuffed dinosaur movie would be an understatement. One is unlikely to find a more delightfully wild cinematic ride in 2025. It's a ride Hollywood wasn't interested in taking. So Sparke took it upon himself to make it happen anyway.

"I saw Jurassic [Park] when I was nine, changed my life, made me want to become a director," Sparke said in a recent interview with /Film in honor of "Primitive War" making its way to VOD. Particularly ever since "Jurassic World" became one of the biggest movies of all time in 2015, it's felt like the "Jurassic" series has had a monopoly on dinosaurs in cinema. When Sparke came across the "Primitive War" books by author Ethan Pettus, he saw an opportunity to change that.

"I came across it and I just knew I was the guy to do this," Sparke said. "Something spoke to me." The film takes place during the Vietnam War and sees a platoon attempting to find some missing soldiers in the jungle. What do they find instead? You guessed it. Dinosaurs! And lots of them. From there, strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.

"My initial thought was doing it the traditional way, getting the rights and developing it, then pitching it to Hollywood and studios," Sparke said. Unfortunately, the studios had a hard time seeing the vision in a world where "Jurassic World" exists. Sparke further explained:

"The problem is, as you pointed out before, everyone said, well, 'Jurassic' has the monopoly on dinosaurs and you are not Steven Spielberg, so how would anyone possibly do this if you're not Spielberg? And I'm like, well look, I love Spielberg and I love the 'Jurassic' series, but don't think that, here's my pitch. And nothing happened. Literally everyone, it was the same conversation and I'm not the type of guy to take no for an answer."

"Eventually, I released another film," Spake said. "When I was over in L.A. doing the premiere of that, I went around and talked to some cast, and some crew, and some people, and producers. Then I came back and I said, screw it. We're going to do it ourselves."

So that's precisely what he did. Under his own Sparke Films, the director set about putting together a budget and a team outside of the studio system. Despite its epic blockbuster scale, Sparke had to make "Primitive War" for a budget of less than $10 million. "It's a completely independent film. There's no government money from Australia. There's no studio. There's no pre-sales. There's literally nothing," Sparke said.

Be that as it may, the filmmaker made it work and put together a ragtag crew of people who were willing to fully commit to bring his insane vision to life. "It's almost like what Spielberg said, if you can believe it, you can do it," Sparke said. "People like Spielberg, and George Lucas, and James Cameron, I hold as my idols." That is backed up by Sparke's favorite movies of all time, which were also clearly influences on the movie itself. As he said:

"'Jurassic Park' is probably one of my, it's the least top three films of all time. It's like 'Jurassic,' 'Empire Strikes Back,' and 'Saving Private Ryan.' My top three films, if I go top five, I add 'The Rock' in there from 1996 because I love it so much. And probably 'Indiana Jones' is the fifth."

It's not like there aren't any non- "Jurassic" dinosaur movies out there. We had Scott Beck and Bryan Woods' "65" in 2023. But for Sparke and his team, it was all about pushing the boundaries while playing with these prehistoric creatures on a cinematic canvas. "I just get to stand back and go, well, what haven't the other dinosaur movies done and what could I do that's different?" Sparke said.

Sparke did a great many things that have never been done in any other dinosaur movie before. The team tried to make the dinosaurs more scientifically accurate, which includes adding features. There are more raptors in this movie than in every "Jurassic" movie combined. There are even evil Russian scientists. It goes hard.

"When I'm making these movies, I have one side of creative making it, and the other side going, what would I say on the internet?" Sparke said. "People are going to think that it's going to be dark and it's going to be hiding things and then we're going to go 'Bam!' and put it all out in the light."

Indeed, Sparke didn't hide behind keeping his creatures in the dark. Once it gets going, it doesn't let up. That was a very intentional choice. At the end of the day, the director knew he had to make his movie on the cheap, but he didn't want it to feel cheap. Per Sparke:

"I thought about it early on when I was writing it going, do we just make it this guy's getting picked off one by one in the dark and hide the things and make it cheap or what Hollywood would make cheap? I really didn't want to do that and I wanted to have this film that starts off that way and it just keeps going on this trajectory up and up and up."

"The length is something that I could have probably worked on, but I got to a point and I trimmed and I trimmed and I trimmed the edit," Sparke said. Even so, the movie is a surprising 2 hours and 15 minutes. He may have had to spare some expense, but he didn't skimp on the epicness. Finding the right balance came with its challenges, though.

"I had a big sign up above the editing suite of don't cut the dinosaurs," Sparke said. "We got to the point where we're like, if we chop character development, it's just literally going to be back-to-back action scenes."

Critics were a bit mixed on the movie, but audiences have, generally speaking, loved what Sparke is selling with "Primitive War." Its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is higher than every single "Jurassic" movie save for the original "Jurassic Park." The good news is that Pettus has more novels to adapt, meaning a sequel is a distinct possibility. As always, though, it's going to come down to the financials. For an independently produced movie, that can be a steep hill.

"To me, it's going to be how it goes on VOD," Sparke said of what it will take to make a "Primitive War" sequel happen. "I definitely want to continue." The team has also been selling shirts, posters, and other merchandise on eBay tied to the movie. For physical media fans out there, the filmmaker also confirmed that a Blu-ray release is being planned.

"There's going to be a Blu-ray, and if that goes well or if it goes on VOD steelbook as well," Sparke said. "I've done an audio commentary, and there's behind the scenes and there's a whole bunch of extra stuff." Come what may, the movie's mere existence is something of a victory lap for Sparke. His movie was originally rejected by a number of film festivals, but they did get a big panel at this past summer's San Diego Comic-Con, which made it all real, both for him and the world at large. As he explained:

"Film festivals, high film festivals, I won't say which ones, but once they saw us go to Comic-Con and once they saw the crowd and once they saw the trailers and once they saw the release, they reached back out to me going, oh look, we should have taken it. We would've loved to take it. If you do anything else, let me know."

"Even up until the release, there was still this, you can't do this," Sparke concluded. "Luckily, the fans and everyone else like yourself have really jumped on board and made a bit of an online noise about it, which, for a filmmaker, is the best thing. I make 'em for the audience. I don't make 'em for the critics."

"Primitive War" is out now on VOD and Digital.