Steven Spielberg is going back to dinosaurs, but this time there are no theme parks, no geneticists, and no Hollywood fiction. Netflix just dropped the official trailer for The Dinosaurs, a four-part documentary series narrated by Morgan Freeman that uses cutting-edge visual effects from Industrial Light & Magic to recreate 165 million years of actual prehistoric life.
The series premieres March 6, reuniting Spielberg with the Emmy-winning team behind Our Planet and Life on Our Planet for what’s being called the most scientifically accurate dinosaur documentary ever made.
Why This Is Making Headlines
Thirty-three years after Jurassic Park changed cinema forever, Spielberg is leveraging those same revolutionary visual effects technologies—now exponentially more advanced—to show dinosaurs as they actually existed. The trailer showcases photorealistic creatures hunting, migrating, and evolving across the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, all grounded in the latest paleontological research.
“This is the story of the dinosaurs like you’ve never seen it before,” Freeman’s iconic voice declares over footage of massive sauropods shaking the earth and pterosaurs dominating ancient skies.
What Makes This Different From Every Other Dinosaur Documentary
The Dinosaurs treats prehistoric creatures as real animals in real ecosystems, not monsters. The production team combined fossil evidence, cutting-edge paleontology, and behavioral science to animate dinosaurs moving, hunting, and interacting exactly as current research suggests they did.
Production highlights:
- Industrial Light & Magic visual effects: The same studio behind Jurassic Park now uses modern CGI technology to create photorealistic dinosaurs that interact seamlessly with real-world environments
- Real locations: Dinosaurs are digitally inserted into actual filmed landscapes—forests, deserts, coastlines—not artificial CGI backgrounds
- Scientific accuracy: Paleontologist consultants ensured every movement, behavior, and interaction reflects current fossil evidence and evolutionary biology
- 165 million year timeline: The series covers the entire Mesozoic Era from dinosaurs’ emergence in the Triassic period through their extinction in the Cretaceous
The approach mirrors David Attenborough’s groundbreaking nature documentaries but applies that methodology to extinct species.
The Spielberg-Freeman Dream Team
Having Morgan Freeman narrate a Spielberg dinosaur project feels almost too perfect. Freeman’s unmistakable voice—which has guided audiences through everything from cosmic mysteries to wildlife documentaries—now tells the story of Earth’s greatest empire.
“From the giants that shook the ground to the hunters who ruled the skies,” Freeman intones in the trailer as a massive predator pursues prey across prehistoric plains.
Spielberg serves as executive producer through his Amblin Entertainment company, which also produced the original Jurassic Park trilogy. But this project represents a dramatically different approach: showing dinosaurs not as theme park attractions or movie monsters, but as actual animals that once inhabited our planet.
The Silverback Films Pedigree
The Dinosaurs reunites key creative minds from Our Planet and Life on Our Planet—documentaries that set new standards for nature cinematography. Silverback Films, led by producers Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill, brings decades of wildlife documentary expertise to prehistoric creatures.
Their previous series Life on Our Planet pioneered techniques for filming extinct animals using CGI integrated with real nature footage. That groundwork made The Dinosaurs possible, allowing filmmakers to capture “behavior” of creatures that died out 66 million years ago.
The production team spent years consulting with paleontologists to ensure every depicted species, environment, and interaction matches current scientific understanding.
What the Trailer Reveals
The two-minute trailer opens with Freeman’s narration over sweeping shots of a prehistoric world teeming with life. Viewers see:
- Enormous sauropods moving in herds across ancient floodplains
- Apex predators like Allosaurus hunting in packs
- Flying reptiles dominating Mesozoic skies
- A massive marine predator swallowing a shark whole in one of the trailer’s most jaw-dropping moments
- Tiny early dinosaurs evolving into the giants that would rule Earth for 165 million years
“Witness the rise and fall of nature’s greatest empire,” Freeman declares as the trailer builds to a crescendo showing the diversity and majesty of the dinosaur age.
Four Episodes, One Epic Story
Each of the four hour-long episodes explores different periods and evolutionary developments across the Mesozoic Era. The series carries a TV-PG rating due to intense predator-prey sequences and natural prehistoric danger—this isn’t sanitized for young children.
All four episodes drop simultaneously on Netflix on March 6, allowing viewers to binge the entire 165-million-year saga in one sitting.
The series also features music by composer Lorne Balfe, who scored Life on Our Planet and brings cinematic grandeur to the prehistoric narrative.
Why This Matters Now
As Spielberg returns to dinosaurs in 2026, our understanding of these creatures has transformed dramatically since 1993’s Jurassic Park. We now know many dinosaurs had feathers, that they cared for their young, and that their behaviors were far more complex than previously imagined.
The Dinosaurs represents the first time Spielberg’s visual wizardry has been applied to scientifically accurate prehistoric life rather than blockbuster entertainment. It’s a project that could redefine how audiences understand Earth’s most famous extinct creatures.
“Long before our time, they ruled a lost world,” Freeman reminds us in the trailer. On March 6, that lost world comes back to life.