It’s still hard to believe that Harry Potter is being rebooted as a television series for HBO. Not only are the films still relatively fresh in our minds, but most, if not all, the actors from those films remain synonymous with their on-screen counterparts.
But clearly, the series will have a huge draw over fans, as it’s said to be a more “faithful adaptation” of J.K. Rowling’s seven books (it’s even getting one season per book).
So, if Harry Potter can go under the knife, what else can? Our minds are instantly drawn to Jurassic Park (1993). In fact, many similarities can be drawn between Jurassic Park and Harry Potter–they’re both based on a series of novels, and though they draw a ton of inspiration from their literary counterparts, they each omit enough that a reboot has the potential to feel like a completely different beast entirely.
Written by the late author Michael Crichton, best-sellers “Jurassic Park” (1990) and “The Lost World” (1995) served as the source material for the first two films, Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), which were both directed by Steven Spielberg.
While it would appear that the 1993 film follows the book closely, this is untrue. Sure, the bones are there, but if you were to base a television series on the book as closely as you possibly could, you’d wind up with something very far removed from that 1993 film.
In fact, there are countless differences between the book and the film. Not only is the character ensemble quite different to what we see on screen, the film omits several subplots, locations throughout the park, and even many of the dinosaurs, while the overall tone of the book is a lot darker and more violent, while also lacking in that “Spielbergian” magic.
The same can be said about “The Lost World”. Again, the film works with the basic framework of a group of characters visiting InGen’s second island, Site B/Isla Sorna, but the villains are a different set of people with a different agenda. And in the book, the T-Rex doesn’t wind up terrorizing San Diego during the wee hours of the morning.
We could spend all day talking about the many differences between the books and the films, but our point is that a Jurassic Park reboot would at least have some solid source material behind it. While there are many who would make the same case for Harry Potter, those films do their very best to capture as much of their novel counterparts as possible.
Of course, the upcoming TV series will likely feel different enough — new cast, new format, and some subplots the films left out — but overall, we’re not convinced it will be all that different to the films, certainly not from a tonal perspective. A Jurassic Park reboot based more closely on the books, however, would, in theory, play out more like a survival horror.
If this does happen, though — and never say never — then it would most likely end up on Universal’s streaming service Peacock. But we’ll just have to wait and see if the studio thinks Jurassic Park is worth cloning for a new generation. For now, we’ll have to make do with the upcoming sequel, Jurassic World Rebirth, which is the seventh film in the franchise.
Related: Universal Studios’ Jurassic Park Attractions May Be Doomed, Report Suggests
Jurassic World Rebirth — Coming Soon
Watch the final trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) below:
Jurassic World Rebirth releases in theaters on July 2. The film stars Scarlett Johansson (Avengers: Endgame), Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer), Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Mahershala Ali (The Green Book), Luna Blaise (Manifest), David Iacono (Dead Boy Detectives), Audrina Miranda (Lopez vs Lopez), Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Bechir Sylvain (BMF), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool).
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