''Welcome to Earth'' is a television series that follows actor

Will Smith Willard Carroll Smith II (born September 25, 1968) is an American actor, rapper, and film producer. Known for his work in both Will Smith filmography, the screen and Will Smith discography, music industries, List of awards and nominations re ...

, as he sets out to offer an insight into some of the world's most remote and uncharted locations. The program debuted as a Disney+ Original on the 8th December 2021, under the ''

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

'' banner, with all six episodes airing at once. The title is a reference to a line of dialog spoken by Smith as the character, Captain Steven Hiller, in the film ''

Independence Day An independence day is an annual event memorialization, commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or Sovereign state, statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or after the end of a milit ...

''.

Premise

Will Smith is guided by experienced National Geographic Explorers, traveling to places such as remote islands in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

, to the

Namib Desert The Namib ( ; ) is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namibia, and northwest South Africa, extending southward from the Carunjamba Ri ...

Production

After filming ''

One Strange Rock ''One Strange Rock'' is an American television documentary series, produced by Nutopia in conjunction with Darren Aronofsky, which premiered on National Geographic on March 26, 2018. On July 25, 2018, National Geographic renewed the series for ...

'', National Geographic suggested Will Smith to become the narrator of a new television program. ''Welcome to Earth'' was filmed during the Covid-19 pandemic. The program was produced for Disney+ by Nutopia,

Westbrook Studios Westbrook Inc. is an American multimedia and entertainment Multimedia, venture company founded by actor Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. The company was founded in 2019, in order to execute the Smith Family's global content wi ...

and

Protozoa Pictures Protozoa Pictures is an American production company founded in 1997 by American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, headquartered in New York City. Protozoa has produced award-winning work that spans film, television, documentary, theater, podcasts, boo ...

Episodes

Release

The program premiered on Disney+ on December 8, 2021.

Reception

Critical response

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the first season of the program holds an approval rating of 100%, based on 9 reviews, with an average rating of 7.00/10.

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which uses a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, assigned the film a score of 63 out of 100 based on 50 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Accolades

References

External links

* {{Darren Aronofsky 2021 American television series debuts Disney+ original programming Television shows filmed in Vanuatu Television shows filmed in the Bahamas Television shows filmed in Tanzania Television shows filmed in Australia Television shows filmed in Namibia Television shows filmed in Iceland