The Latest in Dinosaurs

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brash explorer Professor George Challenger, actor Bob Hoskins gets close to various prehistoric creatures in A&E;’s lavish new adaptation of the classic dinosaur tale “The Lost World.” While on location in the jungles of New Zealand making the four-hour epic, Hoskins had his own close encounter with an overly attentive indigenous bird.

“There was a bird there called the weka,” says the actor (“Mona Lisa,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”). “These birds can’t fly. They are very friendly but very noisy. The point is this weka seemed to take to me for some reason. We had this camera up a tree and I was on the ground. Every time I started talking, this weka piped in. I think he wanted to be part of the film. Everywhere I went, this weka followed me. He was like a big chicken with a long nose.”

“The Lost World,” a co-production with the BBC that will be televised Sunday and Monday, is filled with state-of-the-art dinosaurs that were created by the team that designed the vividly realistic creatures for the Emmy Award-winning Discovery Channel documentary “Walking With Dinosaurs.”

“The Lost World” dinosaurs are a combination of animatronic dinos--used for close-ups--and digitally created beasties created at Framestore and Crawley Creatures special effects studio in London.

It was Tim Haines, co-producer of “The Lost World” and producer of “Walking With Dinosaurs,” who approached the BBC about doing a dramatic movie utilizing the technology they had created for “Walking With Dinosaurs.”

“He said you have this successful documentary and we have the technology,” says director Stuart Orme. “Why don’t we do a version of ‘The Lost World’? So it was this suggestion that started it off.”

The creatures of “The Lost World” are even more extraordinary than the ones in “Walking With Dinosaurs,” especially in their skin textures.

“They made some real advances in technology from the time “Walking With Dinosaurs’ was done until the time we made ‘Lost World,’ ” says executive producer Delia Fine of A&E.;

Though there have been numerous adaptations of Doyle’s novel, most notably the 1926 silent with Wallace Beery, recent ones have been pretty cheesy.

Fine doesn’t believe that “Lost World,” though, has worn out its welcome with audiences. People of all ages just love dinosaurs. “Certainly one of the reasons ‘Jurassic Park’ and that series of movies have been so successful is that it fulfills a fantasy that we have had since we were children,” says Fine. Although the first “Jurassic Park” sequel was also titled “The Lost World,” it has no connection to the Doyle story.

“I can remember when I was a child, the very first thing I wanted to be was a paleontologist. I think that for a lot of children it is the first category of knowledge they really learn a lot about and may know more about than their parents.”

(In conjunction with “The Lost World,” A&E; will also present a new two-hour documentary, “The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt,” on Tuesday evening.)

“The Lost World” finds Hoskins’ brilliant, self-confident and controversial professor leading an expedition to a remote region in the Amazon still inhabited by prehistoric creatures.

Peter Falk plays a fanatic missionary; James Fox is the stodgy professor Leo Summerlee; Tom Ward is the dashing adventurer, Lord Roxton; Matthew Rhys is cub reporter Edward Malone; and Elaine Cassidy is Agnes, the missionary’s strong-willed niece.

Hoskins was very familiar with “The Lost World,” having been a huge fan of Doyle. “I was totally obsessed when I was a kid with Sherlock Holmes, and then I went into the Challenger books. There were about three Challenger books, but the other two didn’t come up to anywhere near ‘The Lost World.’ He wanted to do a series on Challenger. He quite liked the character, but the demand for Sherlock Holmes was too much.”

The actor relished the opportunity to play someone as bombastic as Challenger. “He’s rude to people. He has no patience for anybody. You know, he’s a completely ruthless man. He does everything he wants to do and without any considerations for society or etiquette.”

Part one of “The Lost World” airs Sunday at 8 and 10 p.m. on A&E; part two airs Monday at 8 and 10 p.m. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children). “The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt” can be seen Tuesday at 9 p.m. on A&E.;