Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Netflix has lined up a new historical documentary for its 2024 slate of documentaries that will be voiced by the award-winning actor Sir Patrick Stewart, best known for his roles in titles like X-Men and Star Trek.
Stewart joins a prestigious list of narrators who have provided the narration for Netflix documentaries. Over the years, Netflix has worked with Barack Obama, David Attenborough, Peter Dinklage, Helena Bonham Carter, John Boyega, Mahershala Ali, Morgan Freeman, and Charles Dance.
Directing the documentary is Ashley Gething, the London-based director known for The Greatest Game, A World in Arms, and As It Happened: Pearl Harbor.
Arrow Media is behind the doc, which Iain Pelling, John Smithson, and Tom Brisley. The company is behind dozens of documentaries, working with distributors like National Geographic, the BBC, Disney+, PBS, and CNN. Some of their output includes Brian Cox: Seven Days on Mars, Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and American Monster. This doc marks their first for Netflix.
Netflix has only provided a short logline for the doc thus far that states:
“An exploration of the mystery of the disappearance of the Neanderthals and their lifestyle.”
Gething expands further on the documentary on his LinkedIn profile, saying:
“An archaeology feature doc focused on a Cambridge University dig at the iconic Shanidar Cave in Kurdistan.”
Filming for the doc took place in Iraq, Croatia, France, and Gibraltar.
Neanderthals were a subspecies of Archaic humans that went extinct roughly 40,000 years ago and could be found predominantly across Europe and some parts of the Middle East and Asia. What caused the extinction of the Neanderthal is heavily disputed to this day, with factors such as climate change, small population, disease, the rise of Homo Sapiens, and the assimilation of their species with modern humans.
Neanderthal man at the human evolution exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London, United Kingdom – Photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images
Netflix UK is set to debut a bunch of footage for its upcoming slate of titles in March 14th, 2024, so hopefully, we’ll get to see more then.
This is one of many documentaries lined up for release in 2024 (that’s not to mention Netflix’s lineup of docuseries either), with some other titles set to drop, including Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa
Sherpa, Vampires of Gem City, What Jennifer Did, Will & Harper, and Ibelin.
Gething serves as a producer on the doc alongside Clementine Cheetham with Andrew Cohen and Gideon Bradshaw serving as executive producers.
Are you looking forward to Netflix’s new historical documentary on the Neanderthals? Let us know in the comments down below.