“Jurassic World,” now the third biggest movie in history, had its fair share of references to its source material, Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster “Jurassic Park,” but in a parallel universe, there’s a version that had even more to reference. Though almost twenty years have passed without much word leaking out, it turns out that in the aftermath of the film’s blockbuster success (at the time, it was the top-grossing film ever), an animated spin-off was planned, one that ultimately never came to pass.
Concept artist William Stout, whose credits include “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Prestige” and “The Myth,” has revealed on his website that in the 1990s, he was recruited to help work on a cartoon spin-off of the blockbuster hit. “This was not going to be a kiddy show,” Stout wrote. “They wanted the show to be a mature prime time series with top writers and state-of-the-art television animation augmented with quite a bit of CG animation.”
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The show got as far as concept designs and a trailer, but they needed Steven Spielberg’s sign-off, and it never came. Reportedly, the Bearded One was “burnt out on ‘Jurassic Park’ merchandising and all of the film’s commercial exploitation.” Apparently not so burnt out that he wouldn’t make a sequel a few years later, but still.
From the looks of the artwork that Stout has shared (which you can buy through his website), the show would have reunited all the original characters from the movie, a feat no movie since has managed. Take a look at some of the images below, and check out more over on the From Director Steven Spielberg Tumblr (via Bloody Disgusting).