Tom Hanks is taking viewers across the Western Hemisphere in the first trailer for the NBCUniversal and the BBC‘s wildlife documentary series The Americas.
The Academy Award winner, who was hand-selected by producers, narrates the 10-episode series, which uses cutting-edge technology to immerse audiences into ecosystems across North and South America. Executive produced by Mike Gunton, with music by Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer Hans Zimmer, The Americas will debut with two back-to-back episodes in February.
Toby Gorman, president of Universal Television Alternative Studio, previously told The Hollywood Reporter that selecting Hanks as narrator was an easy choice.
“We asked ourselves, who is the American version of [BBC wildlife documentary legend] David Attenborough? We agreed internally there was a list of one: Tom Hanks. What we didn’t know was if he would agree to do it. [But] it resonated with him,” Gorman said.
Each hourlong episode will focus on a different location across the Americas, including the Atlantic Coast, Mexico, the wild West, the Amazon, the Gulf Coast, the Andes, the Caribbean and the West Coast. The filmmaking team previously told THR that they made 180 expeditions over 8,700 miles of landscape to deliver the show, which is “the most expensive, unscripted project in NBC’s history,” according to Gorman.
Executive producer Mike Gunton added that the docuseries is exploring “an area of the planet no one had ever really covered,” which makes it an “exciting” project for the filmmaker.
“It’s the Americas. What’s so exciting is that nowhere has this range. You cannot imagine anything more diverse,” Gunton said. “As a wildlife filmmaker, you are looking for superlatives. It hasn’t got elephants but it’s got everything else. [We] are delivering things people have never seen before.”
The Americas premieres on NBC and Peacock on Sunday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
English (US) ·