Darren Aronofsky’s film career has often steered viewers directly toward life’s mysterious and gritty complexities. This now includes scientific-real-world scenarios as well as fictional narratives. Though, the Academy Award-nominated director says the push toward science has been with him since his youth.
Aronofsky’s most popular Hollywood features are known for their graphic, often surrealist portrayals of the human experience and psyche. Viewers delve into addiction in Requiem for a Dream, fear of death and mysticism in The Fountain, the Bible’s worldwide flood story in Noah, and a haunting allegory of humanity’s violent relationship with religion and our planet in Mother! Now you can add Welcome to Earth to his credits — a documentary series released on Dec. 8 on Disney+, with Aronofsky as executive producer and director.
The project spans six episodes, following actor Will Smith as he teams up with elite National Geographic explorers around the world. Together they venture into Earth’s far-flung, daunting corners: driving up and down the desolate sand dunes of Namibia, repelling into a vast cave to scuba dive in a 600-feet-deep underground lake, and trailing sharks in research boats to one of the Pacific's most remote and smelly islands.
