Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous
Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous is an American science fiction action-adventure animated television series developed by Zack Stentz for Netflix and is the first television series in the Jurassic Park franchise, set before, during, and after the events of the film Jurassic World. Aaron Hammersley and Scott Kreamer serve as showrunners and executive produce the series along with Lane Lueras, Steven Spielberg, Colin Trevorrow, and Frank Marshall. The main cast 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.
The first season premiered on September 18, 2020. 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 premiered on July 21, 2022. A standalone interactive special titled Hidden Adventure was released on November 15, 2022. The series received generally positive reviews for its animation, characters, and voice cast, though responses to its character designs and writing were mixed. At the 48th Annie Awards, the series won the award for Outstanding Achievement for Animated Effects.
A sequel series, Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, premiered on May 24, 2024, on Netflix, and concluded on November 20, 2025.
Premise
After completing a Jurassic World video game, dinosaur fanatic Darius Bowman is invited to visit Camp Cretaceous, an exclusive dinosaur-themed adventure camp on Isla Nublar. Once there, Darius meets the other campers—Kenji, Brooklynn, Yaz, Ben, and Sammy—who were also chosen for the once-in-a-lifetime experience. However, when the dinosaurs break free from their habitats, the campers become stranded and are forced to venture across the island without any help in the hopes of finding a way out alive.Voice cast and characters
Main
- Paul-Mikél Williams as Darius Bowman, a camper who is a dinosaur fanatic from Oakland and acts as the leader of the group.
- Sean Giambrone as Ben Pincus, a sensitive and shy camper who takes care of an Ankylosaurus he names Bumpy.
- Kausar Mohammed as Yasmina "Yaz" Fadoula, the "most athletically assured" of the campers who later begins a relationship with Sammy.
- Jenna Ortega as Brooklynn, a pink-haired famous travel vlogger and camper who later begins a relationship with Kenji.
- Ryan Potter as Kenji Kon, a self-appointed VIP camper described as the "self-proclaimed alpha male of the group".
- Raini Rodriguez as Sammy Gutierrez, a camper filled with enthusiasm for the experience of being at Camp Cretaceous.
Recurring
- Jameela Jamil as Roxie, a paleontologist and camp counselor at Camp Cretaceous.
- Glen Powell as Dave, a paleontologist and camp counselor at Camp Cretaceous.
- Stephanie Beatriz as Tiff, Mitch's wife and a big-game hunter.
- Angus Sampson as Hap, a mysterious and brooding tour guide who works for Tiff and Mitch.
- Bradley Whitford as Mitch, Tiff's husband and a big-game hunter.
- Greg Chun as Dr. Henry Wu, InGen's chief genetic engineer who re-created the dinosaurs.
- Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Dr. Mae Turner, a behavioural paleoneurobiologist contracted by Mantah Corp.
- Haley Joel Osment as Kash D. Langford, a roboticist and senior employee of Mantah Corp.
- Benjamin Flores Jr. as Brandon Bowman, Darius' older brother.
- Dave B. Mitchell as Hawkes, the lead mercenary hired to protect Dr. Wu. He is also later hired by Mantah Corp.
- * Mitchell also voices Reed, one of the mercenaries hired to protect Dr. Wu.
- Andrew Kishino as Daniel Kon, Kenji's father and the president of Mantah Corp.
- Avrielle Corti as Lana Molina, an investor in Mantah Corp who works for Biosyn.
Guest
- Jeff Bergman as Mr. DNA, the animated mascot of Jurassic World.
- *Bergman also voices an unnamed worker in the Raptor Paddock
- James Arnold Taylor as Eddie, one of Dr. Wu's assistants who had his birthday interrupted by the escape of the dinosaurs.
- Keston John as Fredrick Bowman, Darius and Brandon's deceased father who appears in flashbacks.
- * John also voices Dawson, one of the mercenaries hired to protect Dr. Wu.
- Okieriete Onaodowan as Mr. Gold, an investor in Mantah Corp.
- Jon Rudnitsky as Cyrus, an investor in Mantah Corp.
- Adam Harrington as Lewis Dodgson, the head of research at Biosyn.
- Mikey Kelley as The Twins, twin brothers who are mercenaries hired by Mantah Corp.
- Antonio Alvarez as Godinez, a mercenary hired by Mantah Corp.
- Bill Nye as Hal Brimford, a former employee of Jurassic World who left a message for Owen Grady that leads to the Hidden Adventure, an amusement park on Isla Nublar that never opened.
Several notable creatures from the movie franchise make an appearance. This includes the Tyrannosaurus rex Rexy from Jurassic Park, the quartet of Velociraptors Blue, Charlie, Delta and Echo, the Indominus rex, and the Mosasaurus, all from Jurassic World, and the Spinosaurus, named "Asset 87", from Jurassic Park III.
Other notable dinosaurs that appear include Bumpy, an Ankylosaurus with an asymmetrical face who befriends Ben Pincus; Toro, a Carnotaurus that hunts the campers; Grim, Chaos and Limbo, a trio of Baryonyx; Maria, a Sinoceratops freed from its cage by Sammy; the Scorpios rex, the first hybrid dinosaur created by Dr. Henry Wu; Big Eatie and Little Eatie, a mother and daughter pair of Tyrannosaurus rex; Pierce, a Kentrosaurus cared for by Mae Turner; Angel and Rebel, a pair of young Spinoceratops, and Firecracker, a baby Brachiosaurus. The series also introduces the first on-screen prehistoric mammal in the Jurassic Park franchise, a Smilodon in the fourth season, and the marine reptile Nothosaurus in the fifth season.
Episodes
Production
According to series developer and consulting producer Zack Stentz, who also pitched the idea for the series to Universal Pictures, 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, an 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 collaborated 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. During development of the 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 , 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, 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 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, was released on November 15, 2022.