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Nat Geo adds Goldblum, Ramsay projects

Gordon Ramsey: Uncharted enters production this fall

National Geographic has partnered with talent including Jeff Goldblum, Gordon Ramsay and Julianna Margulies on forthcoming scripted and unscripted projects.

Goldblum (Jurassic Park, Independence Day) will front The Curiosity of Jeff Goldblum (working title), a 12×30′ series in which the actor travels the globe to uncover the extraordinary stories behind the world’s most ‘ordinary’ things.

The documentary series will be produced by National Geographic Studios and will see Goldblum explore the origins behind subjects such as ice cream, baseball, subways, cereal and toilet paper.

“This series is the perfect platform for Jeff to use his uniquely infectious and approachable charm to take viewers on an unexpected and surprising journey,” said Courteney Monroe, CEO of National Geographic Global Networks.

Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, meanwhile, will see the British celebrity chef embark on anthropology-through-cuisine expeditions to unearth “the most incredible people, places and flavours the world has to offer,” Nat Geo said.

The series will be produced by the chef’s All3Media-owned label Studio Ramsay and will premiere globally in 2019 on National Geographic in 171 countries and 43 languages, with Studio Ramsay/All3 retaining rights in the remaining international territories. Production is set to begin this fall.

Margulies (The Good Wife, ER) will star in The Hot Zone, a scripted miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Richard Preston, which Nat Geo described as “an ambitious step forward in the network’s scripted programming strategy.”

The show will be produced by Lynda Obst Productions, Scott Free Productions, Kelly Souders, Brian Peterson, Jeff Vintar and Fox 21 Television Studios, with production set to begin this fall in Toronto and South Africa.

It will tell the true story of the origins of the Ebola virus, a highly infectious deadly virus from the Central African rain forest, and its first arrival on US soil.

Margulies will star as the heroic US Army scientist who worked with a secret military SWAT team and put her life on the line to head off the outbreak before it spread to the human population.

Nat Geo’s existing scripted programming includes Genius, the second season of which focused on the tumultuous life and artistic brilliance of artist Pablo Picasso, and Mars, while Valley of the Boom will debut in early 2019.

Nat Geo has also greenlit two companion programmes to the latter series in the form of two-hour special Inside the Internet and six-episode miniseries 1989: The Year that Made the Modern World.

The announcements were made as part of the factual broadcaster’s summer Television Critics Association presentation, where it was also confirmed that blue-chip factual series One Strange Rock, from filmmaker Darren Aronovsky and Jane Root’s Nutopia prodco, will return for a second season.

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