Courteney Monroe, CEO of National Geographic Global Networks, began the day talking about the upcoming third installment of Genius. MacArthur Genius grant winner Suzan-Lori Parks will serve as showrunner and executive producer on this project that will demand respect as the anthology series turns its lens on Aretha Franklin. The previously announced subject, Mary Shelley, is still in development.
The network kicked off its panels with teens who had competed in an international science competition as seen in the documentary Science Fair, premiering on Nat Geo on May 9. It has been garnering awards at Sundance and SXSW. “We have Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, the duPont Award-winning and Emmy-nominated directors of the film,” Monroe said. “Fun fact: Cristina actually skipped her high school prom, with her crush, to compete in the science fair.”
Another of the network’s documentaries was presented a little earlier in the tour, because Alex Honnold, the intrepid subject of Free Solo, needed to get to Royal Albert Hall, London. Good thing he did as the breathtaking film won Best Documentary at the BAFTA, which were held on the same day as Nat Geo’s presentations at TCA. As Carolyn Bernstein, Executive Vice President of Global Scripted Content and Documentary Films at National Geographic, noted, it’s “the highest grossing documentary of 2018 in the U.K., one of the top 20 documentaries of all time in Australia, and has been honored with three Critics Choice Awards, three Cinema Eye Awards, an Ace Award for best documentary and a PGA and DGA nomination, among several other industry recognitions.”