October 10, 2007 (France)
November 16, 2007 (United Kingdom)
January 12, 2008 (Germany)
April 22, 2009 (United States)
Earth is a 2007 nature documentary film which depicts the diversity of wild habitats and creatures across the planet. The film begins in the Arctic in January of one year and moves southward, concluding in Antarctica in the December of the same year. Along the way, it features the journeys made by three particular species—the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale—to highlight the threats to their survival in the face of rapid environmental change. A companion piece to the 2006 BBC/Discovery television series Planet Earth, the film uses many of the same sequences, though most are edited differently, and features previously unseen footage.
Earth was directed by Alastair Fothergill, the executive producer of the television series, and Mark Linfield, the producer of Planet Earth's "From Pole to Pole" and "Seasonal Forests" episodes. It was co-produced by BBC Natural History Unit and Greenlight Media, with Discovery providing some of the funding. In North America, the film was released by Disneynature, the first film under Disney's recently formed nature film label. The same organisations collaborated on Fothergill's previous film, Deep Blue (2003), itself a companion to his 2001 television series on the natural history of the world's oceans, The Blue Planet. The British version of Earth was narrated by Patrick Stewart and the US version was narrated by James Earl Jones.
Earth was released in cinemas internationally during the final quarter of 2007 and throughout 2008. With total worldwide box office revenue exceeding $100 million, Earth is the second-highest-grossing nature documentary of all time.
A sequel, titled Earth: One Amazing Day, was released in the United States on 6 October 2017. It made its world premiere in Beijing.
