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Once again, Steven Spielberg’s troubled televison production TERRA NOVA has had its premiere pushed back.
From Friday’s Press Release:
NEW EPIC FAMILY ADVENTURE SERIES “TERRA NOVA” TO PREMIERE IN FALL 2011
The new epic family adventure series TERRA NOVA will now launch with its series premiere in fall 2011 on FOX, it was announced today by Kevin Reilly, President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company.
“TERRA NOVA is one of the most ambitious television series ever produced,” said Reilly. “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. This aspect of the series is essential, so we are pushing back the special early preview date to give the visual effects team the time needed for their ground-breaking work.”
“The world of TERRA NOVA is visually stunning on multiple levels, and effects play an enormous part,” said executive producer René Echevarria. “Premiering in the fall will give us the proper time to create a world never before seen on television.”
An epic family adventure 85 million years in the making, TERRA NOVA follows an ordinary family embarking on an incredible journey back in time to prehistoric Earth as a small part of a daring experiment to save the human race. In the year 2149 the world is dying. The planet is overdeveloped, overcrowded and overpolluted. With no known way to reverse the damage to the planet, scientists discover a portal to prehistoric Earth. This doorway leads to an amazing world, one that allows for a last-ditch effort to save the human race…a second chance to rebuild civilization and get it right this time.
The series centers on the Shannon family as they join the Tenth Pilgrimage of settlers to TERRA NOVA, the first colony established in this beautiful yet forbidding land led by its founder COMMANDER NATHANIEL TAYLOR (Stephen Lang, “Avatar”). JIM SHANNON (Jason O’Mara, “Life on Mars”), a devoted father with a checkered past, guides his family – wife ELISABETH (Shelley Conn, “Mistresses”); and children JOSH (Landon Liboiron, “Degrassi: The Next Generation”), MADDY (Naomi Scott, “Life Bites”) and ZOE (newcomer Alana Mansour) – through this new land of limitless beauty, mystery and terror. In addition to blue skies, towering waterfalls and lush vegetation, TERRA NOVA offers new opportunities and fresh beginnings to its recent arrivals, but the Shannons have brought with them a familial secret that may threaten their citizenship in this utopia. These adventurers soon discover that this healthy, vibrant world is not as idyllic as it initially appears. The areas surrounding TERRA NOVA are teeming with danger – and not just of the man-eating dinosaur variety. The Shannons will come to suspect that not everyone on this mission has the same idea of how to best save mankind; in fact, there may be forces intent on destroying this new world before it even begins. Click to Enlarge
TERRA NOVA is produced by 20th Century Fox Television, Chernin Entertainment, DreamWorks Television and Kapital Entertainment. Peter Chernin, Steven Spielberg, René Echevarria, Brannon Braga, Aaron Kaplan, Katherine Pope, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Jon Cassar, Craig Silverstein and Kelly Marcel serve as executive producers. Alex Graves serves as executive producer and directed the series premiere.
Here’s Fox’s teaser for Steven Spielbergs’ TERRANOVA time-travel/dinosaur/survival series.
Yikes… Looks like everything we’ve seen before, all crammed into one show. This spot apparently aired during the Super Bowl.
Deadline.com is trying to clear up dark rumblings about Steven Spielbergs’ TERRA NOVA time-travel/dinosaur series.
Rene Echevarria (DEEP SPACE NINE, THE 4400), has apparently been enlisted to produce the two-hour pilot, working with fellow STAR TREK vet Brannon Braga, who is set to be the 20th Century Fox /Dreamworks TV series’ “showrunner”.
Back in September Braga’s co-excutive producer David Fury left the series, and last Friday the rest of the writing staff was “released”, as the show is going on a four month hiatus while the pilot/TV movie is filmed in Austrailia. It’s expected to take two months to shoot, another two for post production & FX, and cost in the area of $14 Million. That would be a record, surpassing LOST’s $12 Million.
Originally, Fox was planning to go directly from the pilot into a 13 episode production run, but it’s been decided to air the pilot in May 2011, and not premiere the series until the Fall.
If TERRA NOVA ultimately does not go into production as a series, certain costs expected to be armortized over the first season might bring the actual cash outlay to around $20 Million.
The site reports extensive rewrites on the pilot, and the possiblities of cost overruns. See the link above for further details.
