Attenborough sails for Galapagos

Sir David Attenborough will head to the Galapagos Islands for the first 3D natural history project to come from Colossus Productions, a joint venture between UK satcaster Sky and Atlantic Productions.

Galapagos 3D will be the fourth project from the natural history broadcasting legend for the Sky 3D channel. The previous three, including Bafta-winning Flying Monsters 3D, were produced by Atlantic, which then joined forces with Sky earlier this year to form Colossus.

The three-part Galapagos 3D will tell the story of the remote islands and their animals, which were visited by Charles Darwin before he wrote On the Origin of Species. It will air in late 2012 and was commissioned by Sky’s head of factual and features Celia Taylor.

The programme will be executive produced by Anthony Geffen, CEO of Atlantic Productions and co-founder of Colossus Productions, which focuses solely on 3D content for the UK and international market.

Geffen said: “We are very excited to be making our first 3D project at Colossus Productions. It is our most ambitious yet and will involve micro and macro filming on location and state-of-the art 3D visual effects.”

Another Attenborough project, Bachelor King 3D, will air on Sky 3D on New Year’s Eve at 20.00, while Kingdom of Plants 3D, filmed at Kew Gardens in London, will air in 2012.

Attenborough was this week forced to defend his latest nature series on BBC1, Frozen Planet, because it included scenes of new-born polar bears shot in a German Zoo rather than in the wild.

Galapagos 3D is part of Sky’s increased investment in original UK content. The satcaster is aiming to spend £600m (US$931m) a year on UK programming by 2014.