Jurassic World: Chaos Theory is now streaming on Netflix, and we were recently able to catch up with series creator and showrunner Scott Kreamer for a very spoiler-filled chat about the biggest twists and turns from the latest batch of episodes.
With season one revealing that Brooklyn was indeed alive, he walks me through all of her changes this season and what we could potentially see from her moving forward as she comes to terms with her new role and dynamic with her Camp Fam. Plus, we talk about plenty of dinosaurs, a major returning character, and a whole lot more.
Watch our full video interview series creator/showrunner Scott Kreamer below and/or keep scrolling to read the transcription. Plus, please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: Chaos Theory is an awesome series, and a perfect follow-up to Camp Cretaceous. So, where did the idea for this series initially stem from?
SCOTT: Yeah, you know, it all started - this is going back a number of years, they wanted to do another show, and I was like, Camp Cretaceous, we felt we had told the story, and I was like, you know, good. I'm going to move on, do other things, but they want to do something else, and so I said, well, we need to know what's coming in this new movie, Dominion. This was before Dominion was out, I think they were still shooting it, and so, we got on this big Zoom call with people from Universal, and it was so hush hush. They wouldn't show us anything from Dominion, but these two executives from Universal were describing to us what happens in it, with some set stills and stuff, and I don't know, I just got this idea in my head about, well, what if we did a conspiracy thriller with the kids from Camp Cretaceous? What if we went ahead in time, and, you know, something terrible has happened and Brooklyn has been killed, and what that effect would have on everyone, and that's sort of where the whole idea stemmed from. It was like, how do we tell a - it was very much inspired by 1970s conspiracy thrillers and how do we push the storytelling and mood and tone and the cinematography and lighting and pacing was a huge thing. We’re slowing things down a little bit, as opposed to how stories are told these days. So, it was really just, how do we tell this different type of story in the Jurassic universe?
ROHAN: Compared to season one and the previous series, Season 2 introduces a few new dinosaurs - including the Majungasaurus - but it seems like the overall season scales back the dinos a little bit and shifts the focus to unraveling the conspiracy. Did you and the team want to save some of the bigger reveals, like the return of fan favorites, for the future?
SCOTT: It's all in service of the characters, and when we started season one of Chaos Theory, we really started limiting ourselves to dinosaurs that had been released from the Lockwood estate, or that could have potentially been on the Arcadia coming over from Isla Nublar, and then once we introduced the Becklespinax, and just sort of started expanding, like, okay, other types of dinosaurs are being created out there, it kind of opened it up for us. I mean, I'll be honest, part of it is also we have production limitations, as far as, you know, if I need a human character, then I don't get to build a dinosaur character, or if it's a four legged dinosaur, it takes even more production assets, which I don't know if anyone wants to hear about, but, at the end of the day, we're trying to tell the story for these kids, and we're we're trying to - look, when we get a chance to show a dinosaur that we haven't seen before, and the amazing work our design team does in creating them. Look, I love a T-Rex in every episode too, but it needs to make sense for the story that we're telling for these characters.
ROHAN: The end of season one revealed that Brooklyn is indeed alive, but we learn this season that she's undergone a major physical transformation, which you don't typically seen in animated shows. What led to making these changes and what does it mean moving forward into a potential season three?
SCOTT: Yeah, well, we knew that it was baked into the whole premise of the thing, that they were going to think Brooklyn was dead, but she wasn't. But, we wanted that to feel more like, we didn't want it to be like there was a lot of blood there, and, you know, we wanted to sell it as much as we could that something had happened to her and that they would plausibly believe that she had died. And then, our supervising producer pitched the idea, well, what if she loses part of her arm and it just clicked. It raises the stakes. It shows you that she didn't just roll out of the way and everything was fine. It does something that they really haven't done much, if at all, maybe in the Jurassic franchise, in which a character, a main character, actually gets hurt by a dinosaur. And then, on top of it all, it also gave us a chance to give visibility to a vastly underrepresented community, the disabled community, the community with limb differences. You don't see a lot of it on television, and even less of it in kids television or they're usually like a side character, so it gave us an opportunity to tell that story as well. So, once we kind of stumbled upon the idea of doing it that way, then everything sort of came together for the character, and the fact that this traumatic injury, this limb difference, this acquired limb difference now, it still doesn't define Brooklyn, it informs her character, but her whole character isn't just about I'm missing my left hand.
ROHAN: With everyone now learning that Brooklyn is alive, how will this affect all of the group dynamics, namely with Darius and Kenji? Plus, there's the whole Ben of it, where he's been hiding this big secret.
SCOTT: Yeah, I mean, it's really fun. We've not been very kind to any of these kids since the beginning of Camp Cretaceous and we're not making things any easier, especially for Kenji. So, you know, where we kind of pick up, we start the series with Brooklyn's death has kind of sent these drastic repercussions throughout the whole camp fam, and now, you know, we're ending Season Two with Brooklyn being alive. It's going to have, you know, also, like a cataclysmic effect on people within the group, and with their relationships, and not everyone's going to be feeling the same kind of way with how the end of season two goes down. So, hopefully, moving forward, we'll get to explore more about, well, what are the repercussions within this group. We always want to try to take the characters someplace we haven't taken them before, but a place that makes sense with their growth and evolution as characters.
ROHAN: This season, we see the introduction of Soyona Santos, who we'd already met in Dominion. Since this series takes place before the events of the movie, what led to brining Dichen Lachman in this role? Was it pre-planned or did it come together later?
SCOTT: No, it came together later. When we first started figuring out Chaos Theory, none of us had seen Dominion yet, because it was during Covid and I think they were still in post production, and were finishing up the movie. So, a bunch of us involved in the leadership of the show and the writers, we went over to Universal to see an early cut of the movie. There was a different beginning of the movie than what currently is in there, and so we watched it, and it's Covid, so we're all in different rows with our masks, watching this movie, and then, you know, Dichen’s performance as Sayona Santos, it really jumped off the screen to me and as well to our head writer, Bethany Armstrong Johnson, so after the screening, we just said, don't know how it makes sense yet. We don't know where it fits into things, but we gotta get that character into the show, and luckily, Colin Trevorrow was all for it, because, you know, he's with us when we break this series, when we break the seasons. So, Colin was all for it, and so that's how it happened. We were just like, you watch Dominion, it’s like I want to know more about that lady all in white and so that's how it all came together.
ROHAN: Season 2 reveals that there are dinosaurs all across the globe, not just in North America, which obviously means hugh things for this franchise. When you're mapping out this series, what kind of discussions are you having with Colin Trevorrow and Frank Marshall about what you can and can't do? Did you have to accomodate for Gareth Edwards doing Rebirth?
SCOTT: Yeah, I mean, when we started Chaos Theory, I don't even know if they knew they were making Rebirth. I know there wasn't a script for it yet. So, you know, we're given a great deal of latitude, as long as we're not breaking film canon, and again, Colin reads every script and Frank Marshall is also involved in just making sure that we're not doing anything that we're not supposed to be but, I mean, the only thing that we were basically, the only guard rails, is like, basically, don't go past Dominion, you know, don't go way past Dominion, because they didn't know where they were going next. So, that was sort of our only guard rail as far as that goes.
ROHAN: Santos is probably the most prominent movie character you've introduced in the series, has there been any discussions about bringing others to the series?
SCOTT: I don't want to get into spoiler territory, but yeah, I mean, there is. There's a lot of great characters in the films that, you know, we'd love to get in if, again, it has to make sense with our characters, and it also has to make sense within the films as well. We don't want suddenly, like our characters can't be in a scene that would have been in the movie, or something like that. We've always tried to see things from, you know, going back to Camp Cretaceous, whether it's Masrani’s helicopter crashing into the aviary or the guy in the yellow jacket getting eaten by the Mosasaurus. We like telling the story from a different point of view, but, to answer your question, yeah, there's a bunch of characters I’d love to get into the show.
ROHAN: Before the release of Jurassic World: Dominion, there were rumors that some of these Camp Cretaceous characters could appear in Dominion. Was there any truth to those rumors? Or was there ever a conversation?
SCOTT: I think that's sort of a wish list thing. There was a time, and this is an Easter Egg, the Carnotaurus with the broken horn in Dominion. There was a short window when that almost turned out to be Toro from Camp Cretaceous, but it didn't. These things are really hard to sync up, so that was the closest to anyone from Camp Cretaceous actually being in Dominion.
ROHAN: We know Santos will eventually make her way to Malta, but we also know that Brooklyn isn't with her in the movie, so what could be the next step in their journey? What can you tease about when or where she might reunite with her friends?
SCOTT: Yeah, well, I mean, again, the kids are sort of left like, wow, one, Brooklyn's alive, and two, she just turned her back on us and left with the bad guy. So, you know, like I was saying before, everyone's going to be feeling a different kind of way about that, and that I would imagine would really cause some dramatic shifts in the relationships in the camp fam and as Brooklyn is going with Soyona Santos, and, like you said, we know where she's headed. So, I would imagine that Brooklyn's going to be there with her, or be with her on the way there, you know, again, Brooklyn's not in Dominion, but she is definitely with Santos now, so hopefully we’ll get the runway to keep telling that story.
ROHAN: Considering we've gotten two seasons this year, what's the general production timeline on the show? And when could we potentially see season three?
SCOTT: I mean, we make them as quick as we can, but it's a long process, and a lot of talented problem solving geniuses outside of this room who work really hard on this so, you know, I think I had the original idea for Chaos Theory, I think it was around doing press for the final season of Camp Cretaceous, so I know Bethany and I and Aaron were developing early ideas for chaos theory when I was still finishing Camp Cretaceous. So, you know, it takes time, it takes like a year to produce an episode of this from beginning to end. So, yeah, I hope we're gonna hear an announcement soon, hopefully people like the show, and like Season Two. We're really proud of it.
ROHAN: In Camp Cretaceous, the kids were trying to survive dinosaurs, but as they've gotten older, we're seeing more and more human villains. What's been sort of the philosophy behind the shift to see their villains become less black-and-white, and considerably more grey?
SCOTT: Yeah, and not only the villains, like Brooklyn has become more gray as far as her decisions that she's making and, you know, what she has been up to, so, yeah, it just felt more of a natural transition. And, look, I love the dinosaurs, we're all here because it's called Jurassic, but, you know, we run from a lot of dinosaurs, but you don't want to do it all the time. And, like you said, the people can be these villains, and these people, they can be more imposing. So, you know, we keep trying to raise the heat on these kids and painting them into smaller and smaller corners and just kind of winding them up and seeing how they figure it out. So, sometimes there’s something that is more threatening than a T-Rex bearing down on you, and, we definitely wanted to explore that.
ROHAN: There's a great scene where we see an Atrociraptor communicate with the Baryonyx late in the season, which reminded me a lot of a similar scene in Jurassic World when the Indominus Rex communicates with the Velociraptors. Was that clicking communication they use in this series based on anything you researched?
SCOTT: I'd love to tell you that there's hard science backing it up, but, I mean, basically, I always loved the feeling in Jurassic Park when all of a sudden they discovered that the raptors could open doors. And, you know, it's so long ago now, and we've seen these dinosaurs evolve over time, but I'll never forget the feeling I had when I fir st saw that door handle, you know, and it was like, so, what's the evolution of that for our show? And these things are so smart now, and where does it make sense? Where can we kind of tap into that same feeling I got in my stomach when that happened? So, this was just sort of an evolution of that. It's like how smart are these things? How smart are these dinosaurs? And, that's sort of where it, you know, we did different iterations first, there was just sort of communication, or there was going to be a tapping of the claw, and then the guttural impression of the snapping, to where we ended up. So, there's no scientists out there saying that would actually happen, but that was the vibe we were going for.
Set six years after the events at Camp Cretaceous, members of “The Nublar Six” are struggling to find their footing off the islands, navigating a world now filled with dinosaurs and people who want to hurt them. Reunited in the wake of a tragedy, the group comes together only to find themselves on the run and catapulted into a global adventure to unravel a conspiracy that threatens dinosaur and humankind alike and finally learn the truth about what happened to one of their own.
Jurassic World: Chaos Theory is now streaming on Netflix!