Fox has pushed back plans to air its ambitious upcoming time-traveling, dinosaur-filled series, Terra Nova in May, and the two-hour premiere will now air in fall with the rest of the episodes, the network announced on Friday.
Fox had previously planned on giving us a taste of the Steven Spielberg-produced Terra Nova on May 23 and 24, with the full series premiering in the fall. That plan changed. "The cutting-edge visual effects used to create the world of Terra Nova, which is of massive scope and scale, require more time to be realized," said Fox's president of entertainment, Kevin Reilly.
Terra Nova follows the adventures of the Shannon family, who leave a dying future Earth after scientists figure out a way to send a small pilgrimage of humans into the past to prehistoric times with hopes of saving the human race. The series stars Jason O'Mara (Life on Mars), Stephen Lang (Avatar) and Shelley Conn.
I recently chatted with executive producer Brannon Braga (24, Star Trek) in an exclusive interview about what was involved in getting Terra Nova up and running. "Creating a new television show is like giving birth to a child, and this just happened to be a really, really big baby," he said with a laugh. "It was trying to get the script right, where were we going to shoot it, casting ... doing all those things at the same time on a show with this ambitious magnitude, and then we ended up shooting it across the globe. It was a challenge, but a fun challenge." And that was before they added the CGI.
Since the series has dinosaurs and other creatures that might inhabit the prehistoric landscape, they're using animatronics and CGI. "It is a really difficult show to do," said Braga. "It's very challenging animatronic work that we did, but it needs digital enhancement. I think it's like if you watch the behind-the-scenes of Jurassic Park or anything like that you'd probably go, 'Oh, that's a puppet.' But once it all comes together it looks pretty cool. I mean we had a pretty damn cool dinosaur called the Slasher. We built him full-scale animatronic, a seven-foot tall dinosaur, that just standing near it even when it wasn't moving was frightening."
His next statement was particularly telling. "As far as the CGI dinosaur work we're so early in the stages of that right there I can only tell you the small amount that we've done, it looks amazing. We are using some very cutting edge technology to create it, some motion capture technology, which has never been used to create animals before. So we're pretty excited," said Braga.
According to executive producer René Echevarria, the other challenge they've faced has been creating the prehistoric environment. "It is a rich setting. It has something of a western vibe to it, where it's life in a frontier town where people are forging a new existence where no one has ever been," he said in a separate exclusive interview.
The series is being filmed in Queensland, Australia, which gives you an idea how far they had to travel to find a place that would feel prehistoric enough.
"It is just a stunning, stunning piece of stagecraft that was built there," said Echevarria. "Obviously some of the stuff we're doing in terms of special effects wouldn't have been possible even five years ago on a television budget. But as computer CGI continues to evolve and become more accessible, we're able to do things now that would make the show is possible."
While Fox made the unusual move of ordering Terra Nova straight to series without filming the pilo separately firstt, you might think they've had plenty of time to get the first two hours of the series ready for that first look in May. But it's added up to an extraordinary challenge, said Braga.
"Did I think I'd end up in the jungles of Queensland, Australia, with a giant horsefly biting me in the neck? No," he said. "Did I think it would become as ambitious and big a show as when the script first came my way? It was just difficult to imagine what a huge, magnificent journey it would be to bring it to the screen. It feels like we're making an epic, and we are. It is just ... I didn't think I would be involved in something quite this scale and that has been terribly exciting."
While it's not surprising that Fox and the producers have decided to hold off on giving us that May sneak peek of what to expect come fall, it's too bad. It would have been fun to see Slasher and get a Spielbergian blast-to-the-past dinosaur-laden joyride to heat up our summer.
