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.
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.”
Typically, most of Halmi’s lavish productions, such as NBC’s 1998 mega-hit “Merlin,” cost around $30 million to make. When necessary, he supplements his big-budget films with money from foreign investors, according to reports. Last spring’s 10-hour flop, “The 10th Kingdom,” cost more than $40 million.
Another 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.
But, for now, “Dinotopia” seems to be the most expensive yet. 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.
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.
“Dinotopia,” though, takes a different twist on evolution then Darwin ever did.
In the books, dinosaurs mix freely with people and everyone lives in exotic cities (one is built in middle of a series of waterfalls). The machines they use are fantastical 19th century gadgets that were never invented in real-life.
“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.
Halmi, who recently saw Disney’s blockbuster computer animated film “Dinosaur,” says his dino-miniseries will be better. “Ours will be far superior,” he told Variety columnist Army Archerd. “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.”