Nat Geo orders docs from Free Solo duo

Oscar-winning feature doc Free Solo

Disney-owned National Geographic has ordered four documentaries from E Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the producers behind Oscar-winning climbing feature Free Solo.

Vasarhelyi and Chin’s US production company Little Monster Films is working on two feature docs, a 10-part factual series and a one-hour pilot.

Feature doc Thai Cave Rescue (working title) focuses on the 2018 rescue of a boys’ football team which became trapped inside a flooded cave in Thailand.

The second feature is Tompkins, which looks at the conservation work of Kristine and Doug Tompkins in Chile and Argentina.

Into The Unknown is a 10-part series taking audiences inside the minds of elite adventure athletes, including surfers, climbers, snowboarders, wingsuit jumpers, polar explorers and kayakers.

Photographer is a one-hour pilot focusing on conservation photographers and National Geographic’s 2018 Adventurers of the Year Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier.

Nat Geo signed a first-look deal with Little Monster in 2019. National Geographic Documentary Films previously released feature doc Free Solo, which was co-directed and coproduced by Vasarhelyi and Chin.

Red Summer follows the search for mass graves from the Tulsa Massacre

The projects were unveiled as part of Net Geo’s presentation at the Television Critics’ Association winter tour.

Also revealed was a partnership between National Geographic Documentary Films and director Dawn Porter (The Way I See It, Good Trouble: John Lewis) on a two-hour feature doc marking the centenary of the Tulsa Massacre.

Red Summer (working title) from Trailblazer Studios focuses on the two-day outbreak of violence that saw up to 300 black people in the city killed by white residents, leaving as many as 10,000 people homeless and displaced.

The film follows Washington Post journalist DeNeen Brown as she reports on the search for mass graves in her home town.

The film will premiere in June on Nat Geo to commemorate Juneteenth, when the last black slaves in the US heard of their emancipation, and will air globally in 172 territories and 43 languages.

Genius: Aretha is the third instalment of Nat Geo’s Genius anthology series and centres on singer Aretha Franklin. The series will premiere on Sunday March 21 and will be stripped across four consecutive nights, with episodes available to stream on Disney-owned US SVoD service Hulu.

Premiere dates were also revealed for a number of previously announced commissions and renewals. These incude the latest instalment of Running Wild with Bear Grylls and new series Race to the Center of the Earth on March 29, Impact with Gal Gadot on April 19 and Secrets of the Whales on April 22.