Discovery has assembled a team of award-winning filmmakers to tackle one of the most important issues of our time: Why We Hate. The project is being executive produced by Oscar-winning filmmakers Steven Spielberg (The Post, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) and Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Death Row Stories).
Directed by Emmy winners Geeta Gandbhir and Sam Pollard (When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts), this six-part television event series will investigate the human capacity for hatred and how we can overcome it. Why We Hate is set to debut on the Discovery Channel in 2019.
David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery, Inc., spoke on the illuminating project: “This is exactly the kind of story Discovery should be telling. ‘Why We Hate’ has been a four-year discussion with Steven and Alex on how best to capture the domestic and global trends that are growing around the world and bring those facts and stories to a worldwide audience. Our aspiration is to be working with great storytellers like Steven and Alex all over the world on the most important and consequential stories and issues. ‘Why We Hate’ is even more relevant today, and the Discovery team and I are ‘all in’ on this project. It is Discovery’s commitment and critical part of our heritage and mission. I really look forward to collaborating on such an important topic and bringing it to over 1 billion people across our domestic and global platforms in over 220 countries.”
“To say we are excited to work with Steven, Alex, Geeta, and Sam is an understatement. Understanding the why behind our actions can help us change those actions. That leads to a hopeful future for us and generations to come,” added Nancy Daniels, Chief Brand Officer for Discovery and Factual.
Why We Hate draws on research in psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and history, this series traces the evolutionary basis of hate and uses stories from both past and present to reveal the nature of this primal and universal emotion. Along the way, the series reveals contemporary links to ancient behavior and uses science as a basis for explaining the nature of hatred and the human mind. At the heart of this timely series is a question: If we can figure out why we hate, where hate originates, and how it is amplified, can we find a way to prevent it?
“When I think about the name of the network Discovery, it connotes a sense of curiosity about the world,” explains Gibney. “This is not a series that simply documents something that’s happening, it’s an inquiry — an attempt to understand why we hate, through the science, and through a sense of common humanity. Hate is in our DNA. If we begin to understand this, that’s how we begin to get to a point of being able to hope that we can overcome hate.”
Spielberg adds: “Getting to the root of the human condition is something I find not only fascinating but absolutely necessary in understanding who we are. With the team in place, we delve into historical and modern-day stories of hate, traveling around the globe to uncover its mystery in others and in ourselves. If we understand why we act the way we do, we can change the way we act. That is what we are uniquely capable of as human beings.”
Why We Hate is an Amblin Television and Jigsaw Productions in association with Escape Artists for Discovery Channel. The series is executive produced by Frank Marshall, Stacey Offman, Richard Perello, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Yael Melamede, Erica Sashin, and Steve Tisch alongside Spielberg and Gibney. For the Discovery Channel, Jon Bardin and David McKillop also executive produce.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
