National Geographic Television Networks CEO Courteney Monroe’s message to the Television Critics Association on Saturday: we’ve upped our game.

Monroe opened the Nat Geo executive session at summer press tour but listing the A-List talent working with the network: Brian Grazer. Ron Howard. Leonardo DiCaprio. Morgan Freeman. Darren Aronofsky. Katie Couric. Martin Scorsese. Steven Spielberg. Kathryn Bigelow.

“Talk about some serious squad goals, right?” Monroe joked.

The lineup, Monroe said, was part of her team’s plan to transform Nat Geo into a destination for the “best storytellers in the world,” to make “epic, audacious programming swings” backed by “bigger budgets aimed at a broader audience.”

“Two years ago these names had absolutely no affiliation with National Geographic. The fact is that we simply didn’t aspire to their level of creative ambition and premium storytelling,” Monroe said. “But today we do.”

As part of their ongoing transformation of the brand, Nat Geo announced several new projects on Saturday:

—The network is partnering with Kathryn Bigelow, Annapurna Pictures, and Here Be Dragons on their first every VR documentary short, The Protectors, chronicling the lives of African natural park rangers who work to stop illegal ivory poaching. The 12-minute VR film will document a day in the life of these rangers, and follows Nat Geo’s ongoing reporting on the topic, which included a magazine cover story last year and the NGC special Warlords of Ivory.

—Katie Couric Media and in-house National Geographic Studios are partnering on a two-hour doc, Gender Revolution, exploring “the role of genetics, brain chemistry and modern culture on gender fluidity.” Gender Revolution will get a global January release in 171 countries and 45 languages, timed to the magazine’s special gender issue. “Think of it this way: this will be everything you wanted to know about gender but were afraid to ask,” Couric said.

—Michael Crighton’s unpublished manuscript Dragon Teeth hasn’t yet hit bookshelves, but a limited series is already in the works at Nat Geo. The network is partnering with Sony Pictures Television and Amblin to bring the drama to viewers as a limited series. Dragon Teeth “follows the notorious rivalry between real-life paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh during a time of intense fossil speculation and discovery.” The series follows a fictional young apprecntice to Cope, and then Marsh, and is set in the American West of 1878.

—Nat Geo has acquired the worldwide rights to Leonardo DiCaprio’s forthcoming climate change documentary, which will see a limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles in October, and a global release across 171 countries and 45 languages, with the timing chosen to precede the U.S. presidential election.

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