BRILLIANTLY NARRATED BY AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS AWKWAFINA,
THE UPCOMING SEASON WILL TAKE VIEWERS ON FIVE, ALL-NEW BUG-TASIC ADVENTURES IN THE MICROCOSMOS OF
AUSTRALIA, ENGLAND, MALAYSIA AND MORE
A REAL BUG’S LIFE WILL PREMIERE ON DISNEY+ THIS FALL
BURBANK, Calif. (FEB. 8, 2024) Today, National Geographic announced that their groundbreaking, genre-defying natural history series A REAL BUG’S LIFE has been picked up for a second season. Narrated by award-winning actress Awkwafina and produced by Plimsoll Productions, the series will take viewers on five new and exciting trips around the world to get up close and personal with insects and their moving stories. The new season will come to Disney+ this fall.
Inspired by the World of Disney and Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, the new season of the genre-busting series will feature an all-new cast of insects including femme fatale firefly, bachelor luna moth, a real-life assassin bug, the botany bay weevil and other incredible tiny heroes living on our planet. The five-episode season of A REAL BUG’S LIFE will continue to tell the tales of love, perseverance and triumphs in their very own microworlds.
Using the latest camera technology, scientific revelation and an incredible score, audiences will crawl, fly and jump alongside bugs, experiencing new locations. With new microscopic terrains to explore, A REAL BUG’S LIFE will build off the first season, uncovering epic tales, mind-boggling facts and never-before-seen insect behavior.
This new season will include the episode THE MAKING OF… A FLY ON THE WALL, pulling back the curtain on the team of innovative scientists, filmmakers and bug experts as they share the process of bringing the tiniest creatures on earth to the big screen. Get a behind-the-scenes look at how the crew used cutting-edge technology and cameras to capture the bugs in their natural mini-habitats.
Step into the spellbinding world of bugs with the following episodes:
- LOVE IN THE FOREST (Smoky Mountains, Tennessee) – It’s the end of the longest day of summer. A young fawn frolics to exhaustion. While it falls asleep, the forest comes to life – and tonight, love is in the air. At the forest edge, a lonely female firefly is looking for a male, but the Big Dipper fireflies nearby are dancing to a different tune.
- LIFE’S A BEACH (Borneo, Malaysia) – The beach may look paradise to us … but it’s a brutal place for bugs to make a home. From the sand all the way out to the reef, the waves and the tides hammer their home 24/7. Time and tide wait for no bug.
- TINY HEROES DOWN UNDER (Australia) – Down Under – a land filled with familiar fluffy faces like kangaroos and koalas, but the bugs here are a lot of people’s worst nightmares. A eucalyptus forest in eastern Australia is full of ’em: funnel web fangs, ant stings … even exploding bombardier beetles! But there’s much more to Australian bugs than horror stories. Some are actually really cute as it goes.
- ONCE A POND A TIME (England) – Water is a cradle of life for all sorts of amazing tiny creatures, but when one is “bug-sized,” its strange shape-shifting properties can have huge consequences. Through the year, the pond undergoes a series of near-magical transformations from ice crystal to water vapor. The tiny creatures that make their home here have found amazing ways to cope with life in this turbulent world.
- THE MAKING OF … A FLY ON THE WALL – Surrounded by hordes of army ants, chasing the fastest-running insect on Earth, crawling through muddy mangroves … this was everyday life for the team of world-renowned scientists, experts and filmmakers who created A REAL BUG’S LIFE. Armed with innovative filming equipment, they stopped at nothing to reveal the untold stories of the planet’s most underappreciated animals – bugs!
A REAL BUG’S LIFE is produced by Plimsoll Productions for National Geographic. Martha Holmes, Grant Mansfield and Tom Hugh-Jones are executive producers for Plimsoll. For National Geographic, Justine Schmidt and Pamela Caragol serve as executive producers.
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About National Geographic Content
Award-winning and critically acclaimed National Geographic Content, part of a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and the National Geographic Society, creates and delivers riveting stories and experiences in natural history, science, adventure and exploration. Inspiring a deeper connection to the world, the content studio reaches 300 million people worldwide in 180 countries and 33 languages across the global National Geographic channels (National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, Nat Geo MUNDO), National Geographic Documentary Films, and direct-to-consumer platforms Disney+ and Hulu. Its diverse content includes Emmy® Award-winning franchise Genius, series Life Below Zero and Secrets of the Whales, and Oscar®– and BAFTA award-winning film Free Solo. In 2022, National Geographic Content was awarded eight News and Documentary Emmys, in addition to Life Below Zero’s Emmy win for Outstanding Cinematography for a Reality Program, it’s sixth Emmy overall. For more information, visit natgeotv.com or nationalgeographic.com, or follow Nat Geo on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.
About Disney+
Disney+ is the dedicated streaming home for movies and shows from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic, along with The Simpsons and much more. In select international markets, it also includes the general entertainment content brand, Star, and in the U.S., Disney Bundle subscribers can also access extensive Hulu content, including next day TV and Hulu Original titles, on Disney+. The flagship direct-to-consumer streaming service from Disney, Disney+ offers an ever-growing collection of exclusive originals, including feature-length films, documentaries, live-action and animated series, and short-form content. With unprecedented access to Disney’s long history of incredible film and television entertainment, Disney+ is also the exclusive streaming home for the newest releases from The Walt Disney Studios. Disney+ is available as a standalone streaming service, as part of the Disney Bundle in the U.S. that gives subscribers access to Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, or as part of Combo+ in Latin America with Star+, the standalone general entertainment and sports streaming service in the region. For more, visit disneyplus.com, or find the Disney+ app on most mobile and connected TV devices.
About Plimsoll Productions:
Headquartered in Bristol, Plimsoll Productions, an ITV Studios company, is one of the largest television production companies in the UK. Its BAFTA, Academy and Emmy Award-winning team specialize in wildlife, documentary, live and factual entertainment shows and it is a global leader in natural history programs. Since the business was founded in 2013, Plimsoll has grown rapidly with a total workforce of more than 400 across its offices in Los Angeles, Bristol and Cardiff. It is behind more than 50 series, 14 live shows and seven films, including Emmy Award-winning James Cameron-executive produced and Benedict Cumberbatch-narrated Super/Natural (National Geographic/Disney+), Emmy-nominated Animal (Netflix), Awkafina-narrated A Real Bug’s Life (Disney+), Night on Earth (Netflix), Tiny World (AppleTV+), Handmade: Good with Wood (Channel 4), as well as the highly anticipated Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold (Disney+), among many more.
