Confirming that we were wise to withhold making any “extinction” jokes upon news of Terra Nova’s cancellation, Deadline reports that the time-travel-and-dinosaurs-but-mostly-family-arguments drama could be preserved elsewhere—namely, the La Brea Tar Pits that is Netflix’s streaming service. Like the deals with Arrested Development (which actually worked out) and Reno 911! (which hasn’t so far) before it, Netflix has expressed interest in reviving the show, although the report stresses that the talks are merely “preliminary” and not necessarily going to turn into anything concrete. For one thing, Terra Nova is very expensive, as every episode costs tons of money to animate those incredibly lifelike dinosaurs that lip-synch popular songs for the amusement of the effects staff, until they stop slacking off for five minutes and throw together the dinosaurs that are actually seen on the show.
And after its multimillion-dollar deals for Arrested Development and David Fincher’s House Of Cards—and a steady decline in subscribers and stock value—these days Netflix mostly has Lilyhammer money, if you know what we mean. However, acquiring Terra Nova would definitely fit into Reed Hastings’ recently announced plans to up Netflix’s original content ratio to 40 percent, so maybe. Not to mention it would further its strategy to turn slowly into a run-of-the-mill basic cable channel, which is exactly the place you’d expect to see a show like Terra Nova.