The success of our recent coproduction partnership attracted me to cover Love Nature‘s Evolution Earth, a new original production that was announced today at Sunnyside of the Doc.
The five-part series is produced by PASSION PLANET, in co-production with Love Nature, PBS and ARTE. This impressive group of partners has joined forces to create a stunning and ambitious series with a fresh look on how wildlife is adapting to our changing planet and even evolving before our eyes. The series is now available for pre-sale in non-commissioning territories via Blue Ant International.
Evolution Earth stands apart from other environmental-themed programmes with unexpected wildlife stories that are carried by a podcast-style narration that gives a modern, conversational tone, evoking curiosity and optimism. While the stories shine a light on the significant impact of climate change, they also reveal hopeful tales of resilience and ingenuity and illustrate nature’s ability to survive and repair.
The series will debut on Love Nature’s global linear and streaming platforms and on Sky Nature in the UK and Italy. PBS will premiere the series in the U.S. and ARTE will premiere the series in France and Germany.
Shot in extreme locations around the world, Evolution Earth includes five films, each showcasing a different extreme landscape and focusing on stories of hope, resilience and unexpected adaptation. The themes include: EARTH, which travels to the ends of the earth to reveal how animals’ lives can help us understand the extreme changes happening on our planet; ISLANDS, which looks at how animals cut off from the rest of the world are rapidly evolving, providing new knowledge that can help fix the problems on a larger scale; ICE, which reveals the unexpected survival stories of animals at the melting Pole, revealing an interconnected planet with implications for us; HEAT, which looks at the ingenious ways animals are adapting in the hottest places, where tiny changes cause giant degrees of change; and GRASSLANDS, a look at the Earth’s plains as new relationships form, animals move, and the land itself evolves.
Love Nature and Blue Ant International are co-sponsoring Sunnyside of the Doc’s Wildlife and Conservation Pitch session and will also have a booth at the event. You can find them at Booth B13.
Additional natural history and factual programmes that Blue Ant International will be bringing to Sunnyside of the Doc, available for licensing opportunities include:
Wild Dogs: Running with the Pack (6 x 30′) follows wildlife filmmaker Julz Braatvedt on his mission to film and protect African wild dogs. As the first ever cameraman to embed with the Zambian Carnivore Program, Julz takes audiences on a journey following three wild dog alpha females as they raise their pups. Witness how they hunt, how they communicate, how often they encounter predators and what this means for their survival during the difficult dry season.
The series is produced by Icon Films.
How the Wild Things Sleep (1 x 60’) explores sleep in the wild, one of the least understood animal behaviors. This documentary reveals some of the most extreme sleepers on Earth, using microchips, GPS trackers, night-vision-cameras and perpendicular sensors to monitor the sleep patterns of a wide range of wildlife. Enormous elephants sleep only two hours a day, tiny bees snooze up to ten hours daily and some birds manage to sleep while spending 300 days a year up in the air. Some animals can nap with only half of their brain at a time, or choose to snooze with the whole brain, while their muscles become completely paralysed. How do animals deal with sleep deprivation or the danger of being unconscious while predators roam? Each species has found a way to adapt sleep to their specific environments and lifestyles, resulting in wildly varying sleep strategies.
The documentary is produced by Taglicht Media and Tell Tale Productions. Co-production Partners include CBC, WDR and Arte. On CBC, the documentary is slated to air on The Nature of Things.
New Kids in the Wild (10 x 60’) – Every stage of growing up is a matter of life or death. This series follows the first steps of the world’s wildest baby animals.
Each episode follows one species, from birth and fragile first steps to a key moment in life. We follow a cheetah cub, lion-tailed macaque, wild-dog pup, lion cub, and capuchin.
We watch as they learn how to overcome droughts, predators, hunger, even human encroachment, and use their instinct to survive. We see what life is really like for these youngsters during their very first experiences in the wild.
The series is produced by Off The Fence.
The Roanoke Mystery: Final Evidence (2 x 60′; 1 x 120′) examines the gripping 400-year-old mystery of the disappearance of more than a hundred English colonists who settled on Roanoke Island off North Carolina in 1587, the first European foothold in the New World, only to vanish without a trace three years later. After a decade of investigation, a British archaeologist and a North Carolina historian are on the brink of finally unraveling the mystery that has sparked countless conspiracy theories, films, and books, and has fascinated historians and scientists for generations.
The series is produced by Saloon Media & BriteSpark Films
Ancient Earth: Dinosaurs of the Frozen Continent (2 x 60′) -Deep under Antarctica’s blanket of ice lies traces of a lost world of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures. Great forests once covered the now frozen Antarctic continent; gargantuan Titanosaurs roamed its valleys, and proto-mammals darted through the undergrowth. It was also home to the largest carnivore of its day, the Cryolophosaurus – Antarctica’s T-Rex.
This two-part series follows paleontologists on a journey of exploration to uncover fossil evidence of ancient animals and plants that once thrived on Antarctica and unravel the mysteries of how these creatures survived in a land where it’s dark for four months.
The series is produced by NHNZ Worldwide in co-production with Giant Screen Films
Silver Spitfire: The Longest Flight (1 x 60′; 1 x 90′) follows pilot Matt Jones and his team as they make the incredible journey around the world in a World War II era Spitfire plane. Facing dangerous weather, volcanic ash and politically tumultuous territories, Matt and his team fly the historic machine over the stunning vistas of North America, the majestic pyramids and the soaring Alps. As drama ensues at home and the team struggles to finish their historic flight, they push to get to the finish line – and to accomplish their goal of inspiring a new generation through the freedom of flight. The documentary features never-before-seen archive, interviews and stunning aerial cinematography.
The documentary special is produced by Red Bull Originals and Stamp Productions
Coextinction (1 x 94) explores an incredible true wildlife story. After a mother orca carries her dead calf for 17 days, two filmmakers spring into action, joining Indigenous leaders and scientists in a final attempt to save the last 73 Southern Resident orcas from extinction.
Moving beyond a traditional wildlife documentary, Coextinction takes audiences deep into the oceans and forests to witness the complex systems of interconnectedness linking together ecosystem collapse, centuries of injustice against Indigenous peoples, and the frontlines of the world’s most pressing environmental threats. No species goes extinct in isolation.
The documentary is produced by Coexistence Films
Enjoy your deeper dive into the new originals from our Season of the Osprey partners, Love Nature and Blue Ant International!
Sunny Side of the Doc, La Rochelle
