“Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous” is an animated television series on Netflix and a part of “Jurassic Park” franchise.
So let’s find out some trivia and facts about the tv series.
- Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous is an American animated science fiction action-adventure streaming television series
- The tv series is developed by Zack Stentz
- It is a part of the Jurassic Park franchise
- It features the voices of Paul-Mikél Williams, Sean Giambrone, Kausar Mohammed, Jenna Ortega, Ryan Potter, and Raini Rodriguez as a group of teenage campers who become stranded on Isla Nublar after multiple dinosaurs escape their habitats
- Jameela Jamil, Glen Powell, Stephanie Beatriz, Bradley Whitford, Angus Sampson, Greg Chun, Benjamin Flores Jr., Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Haley Joel Osment, and Andrew Kishino also star in recurring roles
- The series debuted on Netflix on September 18, 2020
- It received generally positive reviews for its animation, characters, and voice cast
- Though responses to its character designs and writing were mixed
- In 2021, a second season was released on January 22
- A third on May 21
- And a fourth season on December 3
- A fifth and final season was released on July 21, 2022
- A standalone interactive special titled Hidden Adventure was released on November 15, 2022
- Aaron Hammersley and Scott Kreamer are the showrunners of the series
- They executive produce along Lane Lueras, Steven Spielberg, Colin Trevorrow, and Frank Marshall
- At the 48th Annie Awards, the series won for Outstanding Achievement for Animated Effects
- After winning a video game, dinosaur fanatic Darius Bowman is given the opportunity to visit Camp Cretaceous, an exclusive adventure dinosaur camp on Isla Nublar
- Once there, Darius meets five other teenagers—Ben, Yaz, Brooklynn, Kenji, and Sammy—who were also chosen for the once-in-a-lifetime experience
- However, when the dinosaurs break free from their habitats, the campers are stranded and forced to venture across the island without any help in the hopes of finding a way out and getting out alive
- According to series developer and consulting producer Zack Stentz, who also pitched the idea for the series to Universal Pictures,[16] production on Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous began as early as April 2017
- In June 2018, Scott Kreamer took over a premise and pilot script written by Stentz and worked on the show’s early design
- In 2019, a CGI-animated series was announced to debut on Netflix the following year, to be set during the events of the 2015 film Jurassic World
- A joint project between Netflix, Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and DreamWorks Animation, Scott Kreamer and Aaron Hammersley worked together as the series’ showrunners, executive-producing the series along with Lane Lueras, Steven Spielberg, Colin Trevorrow, and Frank Marshall
- Spielberg did not want the series to be a “kiddy version” of the Jurassic Park films, insisting that the young characters be placed in dangerous scenarios, as in the films
- Kreamer and Hammersley joined the project after it was greenlit and they shared Spielberg’s vision
- The three were inspired by various Spielberg films which often depicted children facing danger
- Unlike the Jurassic Park films, where children are secondary characters rescued by adults, the series focuses instead on the teenagers and their efforts to survive on their own
- While working, crew members watched the film Jurassic World several times to develop tie-ins between the film and the show, even creating a map of Isla Nublar to help with the process
- According to staff writer Sheela Shrinivas and story editor Josie Campbell, the hardest characters to develop for the show were Yaz and Brooklynn
- The writers struggled to find ways to make the characters “likable” to viewers
- However, they ultimately decided that the best thing to do would be to bring out the character’s weaknesses to have viewers sympathize with each character
- The role of Dave was written specifically for Glen Powell, which he said made voicing the character “easy and fun”
- While executive producing, Trevorrow said he had two rules he told the show’s crew: to treat the dinosaurs as actual animals when creating a story, and to avoid animating aerial shots to keep scenes “grounded”
- Programs such as V-Ray, Autodesk Maya, and Nuke were used to create the series
- The COVID-19 pandemic began during production, and the series crew had to work from home
- The series also features original music composed by Leo Birenberg, using themes from the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World soundtracks, composed by John Williams and Michael Giacchino respectively
- In an interview, Birenberg said that he first heard of the show from music executives Alex Nixon and Frank Garcia, who he had previously worked with on Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny, after being recommended by Giacchino, who he had already met
- The second season was released on January 22, 2021
- Early drafts for the season considered having the character of Ben die shortly after his fall in the first season’s finale
- But these plans were abandoned and Ben survived to continue appearing in the series
- Colin Trevorrow attended a virtual panel at the 2020 New York Comic Con held in October, in which he said that the show’s second season gave the production crew “a lot of freedom”
- As the first season depended entirely on the context found in Jurassic World, and the second season was set six months before the opening sequence in Fallen Kingdom
- In an interview, Trevorrow told Comic Book Resources that the appearance of animal trafficking in Fallen Kingdom encouraged the writers of Camp Cretaceous to feature big-game hunting as a major plot point of the show’s second season to teach children that these problems still existed
- When asked about the series’ future, Trevorrow told Screen Rant that the crew at Camp Cretaceous had a story already planned out that would “take these kids deeper into a journey that pulls further and further away from Jurassic World”
- A ten-episode third season was released on May 21, 2021
- On developing the third season, Kreamer said that they “wanted the kids to have their own agency and put their fate in their own hands […] we wanted to take some time and do some cool stuff, and have some fun, and do things that we hadn’t done before because there was no time to do it because the kids were always running for their lives”
- When asked about transferring the animated series into the live-action Jurassic World universe, he responded by saying: “I would never say never. As far as I know, there are no immediate plans for that to happen but it would be pretty cool if it did”
- Along with Kreamer and Raini Rodriguez, Trevorrow teased a fourth season: “We do have a beginning, middle, and an end for it. We do [have a plan], and there is an ending in sight. Scott and the writers have plotted out a pretty exciting way forward”
- Trevorrow explained that the show would not include the volcano eruption scene from Fallen Kingdom and said that “if we are able to tell the whole story that we have plotted out here, that the writers have built, it will really give us a chance to go into some really new spaces that are a real departure from the movies”
- A fourth season was released on December 3, 2021
- In an interview, Kreamer confirmed the return of the Spinosaurus, a dinosaur first depicted in Jurassic Park III (2001), and said the fourth season would take place on an island “previously unseen in the Jurassic canon”
- The writers originally thought the B.R.A.Ds were too unrealistic for the series. After watching a video by Boston Dynamics about robots, however, the writers decided to include them
- On developing the relationship between Kenji and Brooklynn, Kreamer said the idea was first brought up and dismissed during the making of season two
- He added: “It’s a kid show and it’s not necessarily something you would do in Jurassic. But it felt [like] a natural progression. If you’ve got six kids on an island for six months, feelings are going to develop. And we wanted to approach it in a way that felt organic to the show and made sense with our characters”
- A fifth and final season was released on July 21, 2022
- A standalone interactive special titled Hidden Adventure will be released on November 15, 2022
- On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the first season of Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous holds an approval rating of 77%
- Based on 13 reviews
- With an average rating of 6.6/10
- The website’s critical consensus reads, “With a spirited group of campers and exciting new adventures, Camp Cretaceous successfully evolves the Jurassic World franchise for younger viewers – though it may be a bit too violent for some”
- On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season holds an approval rating of 100%
- Based on 5 reviews
- With an average rating of 6.8/10
- The third season of Camp Cretaceous received highly positive reviews from critics, with some calling it the series’ best
- On Rotten Tomatoes, the third season holds an approval rating of 100%
- Based on 7 reviews
- With an average rating of 8.3/10
- In its opening week, the fourth season of Camp Cretaceous was the seventh most-watched series on Netflix after accumulating a total of 16.9 million hours of watch time
- In its second week, the season was watched for a total of 17.42 million hours, placing fourth in Netflix’s top ten list for television shows in the English language
- Upon release of the 5th season, several parents on Common Sense Media gave openly critical or negative reviews
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