A young, friendly, overly enthusiastic, English-speaking dino-scholar and troodon named Zipeau also befriends the two and eagerly agrees to welcome them into his own home until they can find their place in this amazing society, mostly resembling a highly advances version of Europe's medieval civilization. She gladly agrees to show the boys around and introduce them to Dinotopia's peoples and culture. The boys travel to the island's capital, where they meet Mayor Waldo and his disciplined, orderly, caring and quite lovely scholarly daughter, Marion, who along with the senate helps her father and her mother, Matriarch Rosemary, run the island in peace, love and understanding. He informs them that the island is called Dinotopia as both humans, who have reached spiritual, philosophical and intellectual enlightenment here a long time ago, and dinosaurs, who somehow survived here and evolved into sentient talking dinos with human intelligence, live there together in utopian pacifist harmony, save for the carnivores. The two manage to swim safely to shore where they meet Cyrus, the local misanthropic pariah who holds a serious grudge against the islanders. Trapped in the sinking plane wreck, the father orders the boys to abandon him and save themselves.
The plane gets caught in a storm and crash-lands near an uncharted island. “We will have interaction between the dinosaurs and humans, riding them, flying them, helping to hatch their eggs, and co-habitating in a new continent.Half-brothers Karl, a born rebel, and David, the more curious and scholarly of the two young men, are flying a small airplane over the ocean with their rich father. “Ours will be far superior,” he told Variety columnist Army Archerd. Halmi, who recently saw Disney’s blockbuster computer animated film “Dinosaur,” says his dino-miniseries will be better. “Dinotopia” also features characters (both dino and human) who can read and write in a dinosaur-footprint alphabet and fly around on giant-winged dinosaurs. The machines they use are fantastical 19th century gadgets that were never invented in real-life.
In the books, dinosaurs mix freely with people and everyone lives in exotic cities (one is built in middle of a series of waterfalls). “Dinotopia,” though, takes a different twist on evolution then Darwin ever did. In the stories, a “lost” continent is discovered by a biologist named Arthur Denison and his 12-year-old son in the year 1862 – around the same time the father of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin, was alive. The miniseries will be based on a series of best-selling books by upstate New York-based illustrator James Gurney, who created the make-believe world in 1992. Last spring’s 10-hour flop, “The 10th Kingdom,” cost more than $40 million.Īnother Halmi project, “The Bible,” on NBC’s schedule for next year, may eventually cost even more that “Dinotopia,” according to reports that “The Bible’s” budget might top $150 million.īut, for now, “Dinotopia” seems to be the most expensive yet.
When necessary, he supplements his big-budget films with money from foreign investors, according to reports. Typically, most of Halmi’s lavish productions, such as NBC’s 1998 mega-hit “Merlin,” cost around $30 million to make. The six-hour ABC show – about a land where dinosaurs and humans live toduction later this summer under the gether in harmony – is set to begin prowatchful eye of Robert Halmi Jr., the brains behind a slew of recent miniseries including “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The 10th Kingdom” and “Arabian Nights.” WITH a big-screen budget of around $70 million, a new mini-series called “Dinotopia” could be the most expensive made-for-TV-movie of all time.