Steven Spielberg's Netflix Dinosaur Doc Will Fill The Jurassic Park-Sized Void In Your Heart

Netflix's new docuseries "The Dinosaurs" might not be a "Jurassic Park" movie, but it does have the benefit of Steven Spielberg executive producing. The "Jurassic Park" filmmaker oversaw this new series via his Amblin Documentaries company, which is good news for "Jurassic" fans who haven't exactly had it easy of late.

In the early '80s, Michael Crichton started working on a screenplay about recreating dinosaurs in a lab. At that time, he couldn't have known that this nugget of an idea would spawn one of the biggest cinematic franchises in Hollywood history. Even when he turned his screenplay into the 1990 novel "Jurassic Park," he likely wasn't aware of the events he'd set in motion. Once Spielberg adapted the book in 1993, however, Crichton surely started to get a sense of what was to come.

In the 33 years since Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" debuted and changed movies forever, we've had six more live-action movies (only one of which was directed by Spielberg), animated TV shows, multiple novels (including a sequel penned by Crichton), comic books, video games, and a seemingly never-ending stream of merchandise. Yet, nothing has ever managed to match the magic and majesty of the original film. In fact, the recent films have sullied the "Jurassic Park" brand somewhat, with 2022's "Jurassic World Dominion" proving the series should have been allowed to go extinct long ago. Even 2025's "Jurassic World Rebirth" betrayed the franchise with one awful choice.

Meanwhile, die-hard fans of this saga have had to satiate themselves with things like "Primitive War," the greatest non-"Jurassic Park" dinosaur movie ever made. But while Spielberg has no plans to direct another "Jurassic" movie, he has given us the next best thing: a dino docuseries.

As seminal as "Jurassic Park" remains, it wasn't all that accurate. Turns out those velociraptors in "Jurassic Park" aren't actually realistic, and the featherless T. Rex was almost certainly inaccurate. But debates over realism in a beloved Hollywood blockbuster have always been boring, not to mention the fact that the biggest "mistake" in "Jurassic Park" isn't actually a mistake. For those who do demand absolute accuracy from their Hollywood filmmakers, however, "The Dinosaurs" should go a long way to righting Steven Spielberg's wrongs.

This documentary miniseries was produced by Spielberg's Amblin Documentaries and Silverback Films, following their collaboration on the 2023 Netflix docuseries "Life on Our Planet." As with that previous show, Spielberg executive-produced all four episodes of "The Dinosaurs," which acts as somewhat of a spiritual successor to "Life on Our Planet." This latest series also features contributions from Industrial Light & Magic, the effects company that provided the original CGI for "Jurassic Park." 

Of course, if you're going to have a Hollywood legend overseeing such a project, you might as well go all out and get the actor best-known for his extracurricular narration exploits, Morgan Freeman. That's exactly what Amblin and co. did for "The Dinosaurs," which charts the emergence and evolution of the titular prehistoric beasts from the Triassic period right up to their extinction during the Cretaceous period. Cramming 170 million years into four 45-minute episodes might seem like a gargantuan task, but Amblin and Silverback have somehow pulled it off, and so far the handful of reviews that have emerged are all positive.

"The Dinosaurs" is far from the first time we've seen CGI used to mock up a convincing nature documentary. Back in 1999, the BBC impressed audiences of the time with its "Walking with Dinosaurs" miniseries, which used digital VFX and animatronics to bring the extinct beasts to life, winning Emmys and BAFTAs in the process. We've since seen the same approach used multiple times, most recently with David Attenborough and Jon Favreau teaming up for Apple TV's "Prehistoric Planet." Now, its Steven Spielberg and Morgan Freeman's turn.

"The Dinosaurs" is another docuseries that uses CGI to resurrect dinosaurs in what is a surprisingly unflinching look at the harsh reality of life during Earth's early years. While The Guardian's Jack Seale found Morgan Freeman's narration "soothing" to the extent that "The Dinosaurs" could be used "as a relaxation aid," he also noted how the show tells a story that is essentially "an endless churn of species struggling to establish themselves before being superseded by nastier, toothier new arrivals."

One thing's for sure, then: "The Dinosaurs" is going to be a heck of a lot more realistic than "Jurassic Park," which in and of itself might not necessarily be what fans of the franchise are looking for. That said, there is definitely a sense of theatricality to the docuseries, with a T. Rex making a surprise and grandiose entrance during the first episode's opening sequence. If that's as close as we get to a new Spielberg-helmed "Jurassic Park" movie, then so be it. All four episodes of "The Dinosaurs" are available on Netflix right now.