Discovery Program Sales to Distribute Mysterious Planet

Discovery Program Sales, the program licensing arm of Discovery, has acquired the worldwide media rights for the five-part series Mysterious Planet.

The series, which comes from award-winning director Andrew Murray, follows an epic journey to the ends of the Earth to unlock the greatest mysteries behind the world’s most incredible species. The revolutionary series takes audiences to five unique and fascinating locations, highlighting the incredible wildlife that could only be found there.

The locations visited in the series’ hour-long episodes include the Wallacea Islands off the costs of Asia and Australia, the coral reefs of the Caribbean Sea, the Great Rift Valley of Africa, the Andes of South America and Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.

“We are thrilled to be continuing our long standing and fruitful relationship with NHNZ on this incredible, high-quality series,” said Elliot Wagner, senior VP of program sales at Discovery. “There is tremendous demand for blue-chip natural-history programming, and that is exactly what Mysterious Planet delivers. We are excited to offer this inspiring and educational content with to buyers at the upcoming market.”

“Mysterious Planet is a groundbreaking series produced by our teams from New Zealand and Japan. I am proud to mark this series as one of the most creative works of my film-making career,” said Shin Murate, executive producer for NHK, one of the production companies behind the series. “Over the past two decades, NHNZ and NHK have teamed up in a number of projects for a common goal: to achieve ‘true co-production.’ The two parties, with different languages and cultural backgrounds, have united in each one’s strength, knowledge and experience to bring about a high-quality series.”

“Mysterious Planet is a landmark premium series where natural-history stories fuse seamlessly with science stories to unravel a series of age-old mysteries,” said Kyle Murdoch, executive producer for NHNZ, another production company behind the series. “Our crews filmed almost 700 shooting days over a two-year period to capture the most amazing animal behavior, using the latest in 4K and 8K technology to help us better understand some of the greatest mysteries in the natural world.”