Mammoth Movie 'Woolly' Will Show How Close We Are to a Real 'Jurassic Park'

Even though the latest Ice Age sequel disappointed at the box office, hopefully there’s room for another movie involving woolly mammoths. According to Deadline, Fox (which also puts out those prehistoric animal animated films) has picked up the rights to a movie based on the upcoming book Woolly: The True Story of the De-Extinction of One of History’s Most Iconic Creatures, and yes that title says this is a factual tale.

Last year, Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church made the first step towards cloning one of the massive ancestors of the elephant in an experiment that seems inspired by the plot of Jurassic Park. Imagine if Michael Crichton’s novel only covered the very beginning Dr. Hammond’s research, and maybe that is what we can expect with this story, which is being written by The Social Network (aka The Accidental Billionaires) author Ben Mezrich.

You can read more about the true story at io9, which also responds to this announcement suggesting that perhaps the movie version will fictionally take the idea to fruition or just depict the imagined possibilities of bringing mammoths back after eons of extinction. It just has to look to the Church-led Woolly Mammoth Revival project, the ultimate goal of which is “to produce new mammoths that are capable of repopulating the vast tracts of tundra and boreal forest in Eurasia and North America.” 

According to the project’s website, Church believes cloning attemps will begin in 2018 with embryos being implanted into Asian elephants in captivity. Due to the length of gestation, though, it would be another two years before we see any mammoths born. Maybe they’ll name one Peaches.

Interestingly enough, there have been rumors that the plot of Jurassic World 2 would involve the same creatures, thanks to the following “news” release on the viral site for the fictional Jurassic World umbrella corporation Masrani Capital: 

November 2014: InGen expands its excavations to Siberia

The new InGen facility “Martel” based in Siberia has now opened. A rotating research team of nine scientists and an excavation crew of 45 persons will undergo 18 months of drilling at 42 glacial ice locations. The team hopes to find organic remains dating from 40,000 to 200,000 years ago. The state of the art research base has been two years in the making, and is believed to be situated over a group of wooly mammoths buried under the permafrost. “This could potentially herald a new era of scientific discovery, helping us map out our natural history like never before. I’m excited to finally see Martel on completion,” expressed an excited Dr. Henry Wu, eager to add to InGen’s ever growing genomic library.

Woolly will be published in the fall of 2017, while Jurassic World 2 will be out on June 22, 2018. 

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