Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, and Colin Trevorrow, the Netflix animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous tells the story of Isla Nublar from the perspective of a group of six teenagers, set during the events of the Jurassic World film. Excited about the offer of a once-in-a-lifetime experience at a new adventure camp, Darius (voiced by Paul-Mikél Williams), Brooklynn (voiced by Jenna Ortega), Kenji (voiced by Ryan Potter), Yaz (voiced by Kausar Mohammad), Sammy (voiced by Raini Rodriguez) and Ben (voiced by Sean Giambrone) quickly learn what it’s like to have dinosaurs wreaking havoc around them as you fight to survive.

At the virtual junket for the new Jurassic series, Collider got the opportunity to chat with co-showrunner/executive producer Scott Kreamer in both a 1-on-1 and a roundtable interview where he talked about how thrilling it is to work within the Jurassic universe, being a part of the canon, getting to collaborate with this creative team, developing the characters, having scares without too much blood and gore, how they worked in the T-Rex, creating Bumpy, and where they’re hoping to take things for a possible Season 2.

QUESTION: Everybody comes to this franchise as a fan and with a love of these films. What’s it like to even just get to work in a space like this?

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Image via Netflix

SCOTT KREAMER: It’s indescribable. It’s everything that you hope for. When they first started talking to me about doing this, I was stunned and thrilled. The original film had such an impact on me and meant so much to me, and then getting into the novel and the future films. So, to now play in the Jurassic universe and to also get to tell the stories like we got to do — I’ve been doing kids animation a long time and I’ve never gotten close to being able to touch on these themes and the tone and the scares. And then, you wrap it all up with the amazing dinosaurs and the amazing animation and the look of this show, and it’s beyond my wildest dreams that I get to do something like this. So, grateful is the word I would use and just really excited to be able to do it.

When this project came your way, what did they tell you it would be and what were the immediate ideas that sparked in you?

KREAMER: They had already been developing it with Zack [Stentz] for awhile. There was this early concept art that was amazing and a script and the basic idea for the characters. For me, when I started the job, there was always gonna be dinosaurs and people are gonna love the dinosaurs. The heavy lifting was the characters. If you’re gonna hook viewers for a number of episodes, you gotta have people that they’re rooting for. You want kids that, while maybe they’re not likable all the time, are kids that you identify with and that you’re rooting for. So, the biggest thing that we got to work on right away was talking about who these kids were gonna be and where the archetypes were gonna start the show, and then add as much depth and exploding the ideas of who you thought they would be or how their stories would play out. At the end of the day, it all comes back to character. That was really my focus when I started.

Obviously, this show would have been cool regardless but did you know, from the very beginning, that it would be canon and part of the overall franchise?

KREAMER: Oh, yeah. That’s how we approached it. At the beginning of this whole process, not only just the writers but the entire crew were fans of the franchise and the amazing Jurassic universe. The writers all brought a real love to it and we really spent a lot of time, for our series, just figuring out where we could be that wouldn’t contradict what was in Jurassic World, the film. So, yes, we came into it going, “All right, we’re doing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with dinosaurs.” That was where we started.

You have Colin Trevorrow at the center of this but then you have Steven Spielberg involved with it all. What’s it like to work and collaborate with the team on this show?

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Image via Netflix

KREAMER: It’s an embarrassment of riches. Included in that is Frank Marshall. Nobody knows Jurassic like these guys do and also nobody knows how to tell a story like these guys do. Having their wisdom, their guidance, and their ideas was phenomenal but having their trust was probably more valuable than that. It was always that this is part of the Jurassic canon and part of the universe but we were empowered at every juncture to tell our story and to tell the story we wanted to tell. It was great. Frank Marshall would tell me stories from the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark. If I come away with nothing else from this, I’m already playing with the house’s money.

How much can you lean on Steven Spielberg for advice or as a sounding board?

KREAMER: From my perspective, Steven gave the ultimate go ahead on the project, and then it’s been Colin whoo’s been with us, every step of the way, whether it’s breaking stories with us, reading scripts, looking at designs, and everything like that. Right before we went to work from home, Steven came to DreamWorks and did this really awesome 90-minute Q&A with everybody. After that, I got to walk him through everything for 45 minutes and he really liked it, thankfully. It was really great. He had a lot of really interesting questions from the storytelling perspective, as well as directorial, like how much our budget was allowing us to do custom lighting. So, he signed off. He liked all of the characters. He liked that they were all searching and that they were all completely unique from one another. Getting his stamp of approval was pretty great.

Did the decision to set the show against the timeline of Jurassic World pose any creative challenges?

KREAMER: It was challenging but really fun. We basically had maps all over the writers’ room and we were watching Jurassic World on a daily basis for any clues of where our characters could be that didn’t break the canon or the continuity of the film. We had conversations like, “Well, if the Indominus is here, where can we be and where can we intersect with either events just before or just after what we see in the film but not be someplace where it would mess up the continuity?” So, it was challenging but it was a blast to do. It really was. It was like this puzzle to figure out.

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Image via Netflix

In dealing with the continuity of the larger world, was there ever anything that you wanted to do but couldn’t because even though it was really cool, it just would’ve broken the continuity of Jurassic World?

KREAMER: There are always pitches of something that would be super cool but we knew what we were doing when we started and we specifically knew these were the parameters. I don’t know if we spent a lot of time on that. I’m sure there was a wild pitch, here and there, for something that would have blown the continuity out of the water but nothing comes to my mind just because when we set out to do this, we knew the beginning and the end of the story. We also knew the film really well.

Animation sometimes gives a bit more leeway to what you can put on screen. Was there anything that you could do in this TV series that maybe wasn’t possible in live-action?

KREAMER: They can do so much now in live-action. We didn’t pull punches on any of the scares. There is something about the animation, which maybe made it a little more available and not quite so off-putting for a younger child. I think it makes it just a little more palatable.

How did you approach developing these characters?

KREAMER: The show starts with these archetypes, and we really put a lot of time and thought into how to explode those archetypes and how we can ground them and make them feel real, as well as these are kids that you want to root for to make it. With all of the kids, it was a lot of work but it was a real fun challenge to give all of our campers a depth that people aren’t expecting.

There isn’t blood but there are some terrifying moments in this. What was it like to walk that line between making a show for kids but also making it accessible for adults who grew up with these films?

KREAMER: We were never gonna show a lot of blood or gore on screen. It all comes down to the stakes have to be real. If every single adult or kid has all of these near misses and nothing happens and there’s nothing really at stake, it’s harder to really buy in that the kids are in danger. So, it was important to all of us to ground it in real fear. Bad things can and will happen.

How much freedom do you have to create new dinosaurs and creatures? Is there anything considered going too far or is it just all conversations of what could work within this world, especially if you get to continue telling more?

KREAMER: There’s always an idea that’s too far. But as far as what dinosaurs, in the Jurassic canon, there is a finite amount of dinosaurs that either have been determined to be on Nublar or could possibly or are alluded to but it’s a big world. I know there were ideas bandied about in the writers’ room, which would probably go too far or break canon but that’s part of the fun of being in a writers’ room. Everyone gets to pitch their ideas, and then we cull the best ones and try to put them up there on screen.

Obviously, the T-Rex is a big fan favorite. What motivated the decision not to feature it as heavily as some of the other dinosaurs? Are there as many conversations about how to work in the dinosaurs and which dinosaurs to work in, as there is about character development of the human characters?

KREAMER: Well, there are two questions there. One, I love a T-Rex but simply by how the story was told in Jurassic World, it just didn’t make any sense to have the T-Rex. And then, we did 50 different versions of the opening title, and I think it was Colin who came up with the idea of, “Why don’t we put the T-Rex in that?,” and I was so happy. All the way through, I had missed the T-Rex, so we got to put her in every episode with the opening title. As far as what dinosaurs, no we didn’t spend as much time on that. Character development was the most important thing. And then, once we figured out the thrust of the character motivation, or what we were tying to illuminate about the characters in a particular episode, then we would go, “Okay, what would be the coolest dinosaur to see?” It all starts with the character, and then after you feel like you’ve got that as tied down as you can, you figure out what makes the most sense, dinosaur wise, and what would be coolest.

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Image via Netflix

Audiences across the globe have fallen in love with Bumpy. If there is a second season, is there going to be a bigger story for that adorable baby dinosaur?

KREAMER: We all loved Bumpy before it went out there, so to see the adoration and the Baby Yoda-like love that Bumpy is getting has been incredibly gratifying. If we go forward, Bumpy is one of our gang, so I would imagine that we would see more of Bumpy.

Given how the season ends, what excites you about the prospect of setting the future of their story amid the shambles of Jurassic World?

KREAMER: If we’re lucky enough to get to tell more stories with these characters, if you look at where the characters start and where they end, from a character perspective, there’s a lot of change and growth but by no means are they finished products. We definitely wanna see how these characters and their relationships evolve over time. That would be great. Plus at the end center of our story is that it’s a story about kids with no one to count on but each other. It’s a survival story. It’s a there’s no adults coming to rescue us story. If we do more, that’s the interesting stuff. I love Dave and Roxie, and Glen [Powell] and Jameela [Jamil]’s performances. It would have been really fun to leave them on the island with the kids but you can’t. This is a story about kids in peril, on their own. I would definitely love to see more exploration of that concept.

If there is a second season, have you talked about how the tone could evolve?

KREAMER: Hypothetically, if there’s more, where we leave the kids off, at the end of the season, is that they’re alone on this island and they only have each other. I would imagine, if we were to do more, it would definitely be set in a survival story, or a get off the island story, or a we just gotta make it story.

What has it been like to see the fan response for the show, especially given the circumstances in which it’s released, where there really are no blockbusters movies to go see right now and this is resonating with audiences in an unprecedented way?

KREAMER: Incredibly gratifying and spectacular. I’m very proud of this show and I thought people were gonna like it but the internet is not always a friendly place. So, the outpouring of love and appreciation for this show has exceeded all of my expectations. For the crew and the writers and all of us involved with it, it’s great. It’s fantastic. We worked real hard and it’s nice that people like what we’ve done.

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is available to stream at Netflix.

Christina Radish is a Senior Reporter of Film, TV, and Theme Parks for Collider. You can follow her on Twitter @ChristinaRadish.