Animal Planet Preps Grizzly Man “Prequel”

BEVERLY HILLS, July 10: This summer, Animal Planet in the U.S. will air an eight-part series documenting the life of Timothy Treadwell—the subject of Werner Herzog’s acclaimed documentary Grizzly Man—in the decade before his death in 2003 in Alaska.

For 13 years, Treadwell spent summers photographing and filming a community of wild grizzly bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. The 2005 theatrical documentary Grizzly Man, from Discovery Channel’s theatrical doc division and Lionsgate, focused on the last five years of Treadwell’s life. He and his girlfriend were killed by bears in 2003.

Grizzly Man Diaries will draw upon the hundreds of hours of archived footage, private pages from his diaries and more than 10,000 still photographs. From the producers of both Grizzly Man and Herzog’s new feature Encounters At The End Of The World, it premieres August 22.

Announcing the new series at the TCA Press Tour in Beverly Hills, Marjorie Kaplan, the president and general manager of Animal Planet Media, noted: "We all know how this tragic story concludes. But with this new series, Animal Planet really digs deep into the glory that Timothy saw in these magnificent creatures. These are the fascinating stories he died to tell."

—By Mansha Daswani