“No guts, no glory,” said Halmi, who produced many of the event miniseries generated during the genre’s heyday, including 1996’s “Gulliver’s Travels” and 1997’s “The Odyssey,” which drew appropriately epic ratings. It turned into an $85-million production-of which ABC paid more than $20 million, according to people familiar with the situation. the go-ahead for “Dinotopia,” based on the books and elaborate oil paintings by James Gurney that have been a hit worldwide. Three years ago, Lyne gave producer Robert Halmi Sr. Quinn Taylor, who took her place overseeing ABC movies and miniseries, said the network is confident that it’s an ideal family show, calling “Dinotopia” a “calculated risk.” Lyne-in the midst of screening new-series candidates for ABC’s fall lineup, the first assembled since her promotion-declined to discuss the project.
The gamble on the miniseries is the work of Susan Lyne, who oversaw ABC’s movies and miniseries before being named president of ABC Entertainment in January, after amassing a strong track record of projects that included the Emmy-winning “Anne Frank.” The scheduling was coincidental, according to ABC executives, but if “Dinotopia” fails, it could cast a pall over the crucial event, sending the wrong signal to the advertisers ABC is trying so desperately to woo.
Moreover, without waiting to see whether audiences liked it or not, ABC-whose ratings are down more than 20% this season-has already ordered seven episodes of a spinoff “Dinotopia” series for next season.Īnd if that pressure weren’t enough, the first two installments of the miniseries, Sunday and Monday, fall on the two days immediately preceding ABC’s “upfront” presentation of its fall schedule to advertisers in New York on Tuesday. But ABC, which is owned by Walt Disney Co., is giving the six-hour “Dinotopia” three consecutive nights beginning Sunday, in the middle of the important May ratings sweeps, on which stations depend to set future ad rates. The miniseries comes at a time when other networks have cut back on or abandoned the genre after audiences seemed to lose interest.
Taking a major leap of faith, ABC is hoping “Dinotopia"-a fantasy world in which humans and dinosaurs coexist-can help breathe life into a struggling television network that lives in a real world where big-budget, special effects-laden movies have been on the verge of extinction.