The James Cameron series Secrets of the Elephants, narrated by Natalie Portman, premieres on National Geographic April 21. There are four episodes. They will be on Disney Plus and Hulu April 22, which happens to be Earth Day.
“Elephants have long been a source of wonder and mystery with their rich emotional lives and almost supernatural ways of navigating the world,” said National Geographic. “In Secrets of the Elephants, we travel the globe to meet different families of elephants ― desert elephants, forest elephants, Asian elephants and African savannah elephants ― and each has an incredible story of intelligence, grace and survival to tell.”
The four episodes look at elephants in the Savanna, Desert, Rainforest and Asia regions.
Portman’s movies include Thor: Love & Thunder, Black Swan and Star Wars: Episode 1–The Phantom Menace.
Cameron, director of Titanic, Avatar and Avatar: The Way of the Water, executive produces with Maria Wilhelm for Earthship. Lucinda Axelsson is the executive producer for Oxford Scientific Films.
The Secrets Of franchise began with Whales, which came out on Earth Day two years ago, and had Sigourney Weaver narrating. Besides Elephants, Cameron will examine Secrets Of the Octopus, Secrets of the Penguins and Secrets of the Bees.
Cameron popped up at the TCA press tour event in Pasadena in January to discuss the projects. He mentioned his “endless curiosity and fascination with the natural world and my awe of nature and how it works and how rapidly science is starting to answer these questions about how animals communicate, how they have culture, how they operate in their ecosystems.”
Speaking about Secrets of the Bees, Cameron mentioned the hives he oversees on a farm in New Zealand, and his fascination regarding how bees operate. “It's not a mind like ours,” he said. “It's kind of more of a big committee, and it's pretty amazing how they organize, how they communicate, and so on. So there are a lot of exciting aspects of that.”
Cameron suggested humankind has lost touch with nature, perhaps precipitated by people being stuck at home during the pandemic. “As Maria [Wilhelm] said, we need to fall back in love with nature the way we are when we are kids,” he said. “When we are kids, we don't question it. We just want to be there. We want to be with the animals, observe, pick, go through the forest, run wild. And that atavistic sort of impulse is to be part of what's around us. And, then, we leave it behind as we become adults, unless you are one of the lucky and amazing and passionate people that get to go out on these projects.”
Cameron summed up the Secrets Of projects thusly: “It's curiosity, it's awe, it's wonder and it's storytelling, because nature doesn't get the script ahead of time.”
