History, Nutopia tell story of mankind

US cablenet History has commissioned Jane Root’s indie Nutopia to make an epic 12-hour series on the history of the human race.

Mankind: The Story of All of Us (wt) is a 12-hour long series that will be stripped across six nights on History in the US later this year.

It’s a follow-up to Nutopia’s Emmy award-winning 2010 special America: The Story of Us and is executive produced by Root and Ben Goold for Nutopia and Paul Cabana and Julian P. Hobbs for History.

The series – which has already had scenes shot in China, South Africa, Morocco and the UK – will also air on History in the UK later this year. It aims to tell the story of the creation and development of the human race from the very beginning.

History says it will accompany the series with an “ambitious educational initiative” and companion programming on its new spin-off network H2.

Nutopia co-founder and former president of Discovery Channel US Jane Root described the series as a “network defining megadoc”.

“The scope and scale of Mankind: The Story of All of Us will be astounding,” said Root. “There is a huge appetite throughout the world for documentaries such as this that tackle the biggest subjects on our planet in an entirely new epic style that combines extraordinary drama, CGI and interviews.”

The commission is the latest for Nutopia which is also working on How We Invented the World for Discovery Networks International and also worked on Great Britain: Our Story for UK satcaster Sky.

The company has been actively targeting a push into the US market with formats and large scale documentary projects.