The producers who created The Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet for the BBC are moving to Netflix for their next series, entitled Our Planet – but it’s not out until 2019

The team behind the hugely successful and respected nature documentaries The Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and Frozen Planet are moving from their previous home of the BBC to Netflix, for their new epic Our Planet.

Alastair Fothergill, whose production company Silverback Films will make the eight-part series, said: “Our Planet is going to raise the bar for natural history landmarks. We will reveal the most amazing sights on Earth and show them in ways they have never been seen before.”

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With Planet Earth, the team became the first to film in HD on the BBC, and they will continue to shoot at the highest quality, using 4K cameras for the new series – the ultra-high-definition format used for The Hobbit, House of Cards, and James Cameron’s forthcoming Avatar sequels.

And like Planet Earth, which took five years to make, Our Planet will be a similarly lengthy undertaking, set to premiere on Netflix in 2019. The producers promise episodes from never-before-filmed parts of Earth, including deep oceans, remote forests and ice caps.

Their series, traditionally presented by David Attenborough, have been huge successes for the BBC. Planet Earth itself was sold to 130 countries, and the shows have won multiple National Television Awards in the UK, and Emmy awards in the US.

The acquisition further bolsters Netflix’s nature programming, already admired following this year’s Oscar nomination for their homegrown documentary Virunga. Earlier this year they announced a partnership with Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company to make more films together, following their success together with Virunga.