Paramount+ Surprise Releases Star-Studded 'Ark: The Animated Series'

While the cast was announced way back in 2020, Paramount+ wasn’t even publicly announced as having picked up the show before it was released

Well this is going to be quite the surprise to many. Ark: The Animated Series, based on the hit adventure video game Ark: Survival Evolved from Studio Wildcard, has begun streaming the first six episodes of what is likely a thirteen-episode first season on Paramount+ in the United States and Canada, while all other territories the streamer is available will get them on April 19. The probable back 7 episodes will premiere at a later date.

The series, described as “a sweeping saga spanning eons of human history” was first announced with a trailer during the 2020 Video Game Awards, with an intended 2022 premiere date, while a later second trailer bumped it to 2023. Cast had already been known in the earliest announcements. After that, things had apparently gone so silent that Paramount+ was never actually publicly announced as the series’s home. Only on Saturday, March 15 did the streamer even hint at such with this tweet. Admittedly, the connections I have at What’s On Paramount+ meant I knew it existed from certain materials given from those connections, but it was not on any content roadmaps, and any announcements happen when the trades do.

Ark: The Animated Series’s logline reads “When 21st century paleontologist Helena Walker finds herself resurrected on a mysterious primeval island populated by prehistoric beasts, she must learn to survive with new allies from throughout time, while trying to uncover the true nature of their strange new world.” Three of the series’s stars, Gerard Butler, who voices Ancient Rome’s brutal despot General Gaius Marcellus Nerva, Russell Crowe, who voices self-proclaimed “Dino whisperer” Kor the Prophet, and Vin Diesel, who voices pilot and freedom fighter Santiago, also serve as executive producers. Even on top of them, the cast is stacked, including Madeleine Madden as Walker, a bit of a How to Train Your Dragon reunion between Butler and David Tennant, who voices the antagonist 19th century scientist Sir Edmund Rockwell but also Michelle Yeoh, Jeffrey Wright, Karl Urban, Zahn McClarnon, Devery Jacobs, Elliot Page, Deborah Mailman, Ragga Ragnars, Malcolm McDowell, Monica Bellucci, and Alan Tudyk, rounding it out.

A production of Lost Continent Entertainment and Lex + Otis, Ark: The Animated Series is executive produced by Diesel through his production company ONE Race Films, with employees Marc Diana, Doug Kennedy, Jay Oliva, James Baldanzi, and Samantha Vincent, as well as Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak. Butler is also executive producing through his production company G-Base Entertainment alongside Alan Siegel, while Crowe is doing so as a solo endeavor. Stieglitz, Oliva, David Hartman and Sebastian Montes serve as directors, and the series is co-written by Marguerite Bennett, who wrote the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers “Beyond the Grid” comics arc, and Kendall Deacon Davis. The Paramount+ Twitch channel is streaming the first episode for 24 hours, their first stream since Star Trek Day in September. Watch the announcement trailer below.

Source: Variety, Globe Newswire