Four years after NBC revealed it was moving into big-budget wildlife programming, the fruits of its labor are finally heading to the screen.
The Americas, the network’s ten-part tentpole wildlife series narrated by Tom Hanks, will premiere in February. The show will kick off with a two-hour premiere on Sunday, February 23.
It will be joined in midseason by Destination X, the network’s big new reality series that Deadline revealed received a series order in April, and procedural drama The Hunting Party starring Melissa Roxburgh.
The Americas was first announced in January 2020 by then-NBC boss Paul Telegdy. The show, which was then titled The New World, was originally set to launch on the back of the 2024 Olympics.
The series will cover wildlife across North America and South America including iconic locations in the United States. It will feature music by Hans Zimmer.
The Americas is executive produced by Planet Earth II and Dynasties exec producer Mike Gunton for BBC Studios Natural History Unit, in association with Universal Television Alternative Studio.
Earlier this year, Universal Television Alternative Studio boss Toby Gorman called the series the most expensive unscripted project in NBCUniversal’s history.”
He said that they talked about “who is the American version of David Attenborough” before settling on two-time Oscar winner Hanks.
“When we embarked on this we wanted to go as big as possible and after some conversations we said internally that there was a list of one,” he added. “We wanted Tom, it just felt right. What we didn’t know is whether he would want to do it.”
Elsewhere in 2025, Destination X and The Hunting Party will also air in midseason, alongside the recently renewed Deal or No Deal Island.
Adventure series Destination X sees a group of contestants go on the road trip of a lifetime but they have no idea of their location. In order to win, they must figure out their mystery locations. Once they’re on the blacked-out Destination X bus, the journey turns into a real-life game board, with challenges designed to offer clues as to their location, along with a few misdirects to keep them guessing. At the end of each episode, the contestant who places an X on a map furthest from the actual location packs their bags. The first participant to reach Destination X will be crowned the winner.
The series followed a similar production model to breakout mystery format The Traitors. It will be produced by British production company Twofour, which is making two separate versions, one for NBC and one for the BBC.
The show, which is based on a Belgian, will be co-produced by UTAS, and will be exec produced by Caroline Davies, Andy Cadman, Dan Adamson and David Clews.
Finally, The Hunting Party stars Roxburgh as its lead. The Manifest star will play Rebecca “Bex” Henderson, an ex-FBI agent recruited to an elite government task force due to her reputation as a savvy profiler who’s caught some of the world’s most dangerous serial killers
Created by JJ Bailey who wrote the pilot episode, The Hunting Party is a high-concept crime procedural about a small team of investigators who are assembled to track down and capture the most dangerous killers the U.S. has ever seen, all of whom have just escaped from a top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist.
It received a straight-to-series order in February. Produced by Universal Television, Bailey and Jake Coburn will exec produce and serve as co-showrunners.