'Terra Nova' Canceled By Fox

A second season of the expensive, time-traveling dinosaur epic Terra Nova will not air on the Fox network, but producers at 20th Century Fox TV have said they will continue to shop the show to other networks in an effort to keep the 7.5 million viewers it averaged in its first season.

Terra Nova, created by Steven Spielberg and starring Jason O'Mara, failed to draw enough viewers to satisfy its whopping budget. The series premiere alone was estimated to have cost between $10 and $20 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Before the twice-delayed premiere aired, Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly characterized the show as quite a gamble. "Terra Nova is a big swing — and the best of Fox tends to be big swings, in concept and/or tone," he said. "We are in the big-bet business. So if you're looking to break through and garner a big share of a fractured audience, and it is going to be costly regardless, you take the most exciting shots you can for your audience."

Critics, meanwhile, who were not impressed with the dollar signs, expressed disappointment with the show's lack of creativity. "The main narrative combined a C-grade time travel story that would make Ray Bradbury chortle dismissively, a D-grade gritty reboot of Lost in Space that couldn’t even find space for a funny robot, and a Z-grade conspiracy plotline written specifically for people who thought FlashForward could’ve used more conspiracy plotlines," Darren Franich wrote in Entertainment Weekly. "However, Terra Nova cost an insane amount of money, so I guess you could say that it was 'ambitious,' in the sense that it’s ambitious to try to build an elevator to the moon using styrofoam and Elmer’s glue."

No word yet on which networks, if any, will decide to buy and air the show, which has touted its popularity among foreign audiences.