Dinotopia is a four-hour (three-episode) TV miniseries co-produced by Walt Disney Television and Hallmark Entertainment. It is based on the fictional world of Dinotopia, a utopia in which sentient dinosaurs and humans coexist, created by American author James Gurney. The miniseries uses plot details from Gurney's first two Dinotopia books, Dinotopia and Dinotopia: The World Beneath, although it takes place in a time farther into the future. The main characters are two American teenage boys from a contemporary time frame (unlike the Victorian era castaways in the books—the film thus loses some of the Steampunk and classicism of the original books).[1] The boys crash their father's plane into the sea and get stranded on Dinotopia, where they must adjust to a new society. The story in the film contains references to many of the characters in the book series, with some of their descendents occupying key roles in the plot. The original score was composed by Trevor Jones.
The miniseries premiered as an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney anthology on May 12, 2002 on ABC. It received an Emmy Award for Best Visual Effects. It was soon followed by a television series which only lasted for one season.
