Steven Spielberg & Alex Gibney Working on Discovery’s Why We Hate

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Discovery has aligned with filmmaking heavyweights Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney for the event series Why We Hate (working title).

Directed by Geeta Gandbhir and Sam Pollard (When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts), the six-part event investigates the human capacity for hatred and how we can overcome it. The project will trace the evolutionary basis of hate and use stories from both past and present to reveal the nature of this emotion.

The series will debut on Discovery Channel in 2019. It is an Amblin Television and Jigsaw Productions in association with Escape Artists for Discovery Channel.

“This is exactly the kind of story Discovery should be telling,” said David Zaslav, president and CEO of Discovery, Inc. “Why We Hate has been a four-year discussion with Steven and Alex on how to best capture the domestic and global trends that are growing around the world and bring those facts and stories to a worldwide audience. Our aspiration is to be working with great storytellers like Steven and Alex all over the world on the most important and consequential stories and issues. Why We Hate has been a four-year discussion with Steven and Alex on how to best capture the domestic and global trends that are growing around the world and bring those facts and stories to a worldwide audience is even more relevant today, and the Discovery team and I are ‘all in’ on this project. It is Discovery’s commitment and a critical part of our heritage and mission. I really look forward to collaborating on such an important topic and bringing it to over 1 billion people across our domestic and global platforms in over 220 countries.”

“To say we are excited to work with Steven, Alex, Geeta and Sam is an understatement,” said Nancy Daniels, chief brand officer for Discovery and factual. “Understanding the why behind our actions can help us change those actions. That leads to a hopeful future for us and generations to come.”

“When I think about the name of the network Discovery, it connotes a sense of curiosity about the world,” added Gibney. “This is not a series that simply documents something that’s happening, it’s an inquiry—an attempt to understand why we hate, through the science, and through a sense of common humanity. Hate is in our DNA. If we begin to understand this, that’s how we begin to get to a point of being able to hope that we can overcome hate.”

“Getting to the root of the human condition is something I find not only fascinating, but absolutely necessary in understanding who we are,” said Spielberg.  “With the team in place, we delve into historical and modern-day stories of hate, traveling around the globe to uncover its mystery in others and in ourselves. If we understand why we act the way we do, we can change the way we act. That is what we are uniquely capable of as human beings.”