Rolling out immediately after the highly anticipated U.S. premiere, FOX International Channels will air the premiere episode simultaneously on National Geographic Channel and FOX on Sunday, 16 March at 19:10 with a delayed broadcast on Nat Geo Wild at 23:00. The additional 12 episodes will air exclusively on National Geographic Channels.

“The vision of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey inspired us to create a launch across all of our National Geographic Channels and FOX channels that will reach an unprecedented 400 million homes outside the U.S.,” said Liz Dolan, chief marketing officer of FOX International Channels and National Geographic Channels International. “We have done global launches across all of our FOX entertainment channels for shows like The Walking Dead. We have done global launches across all of our National Geographic Channels for shows like Brain Games. But we have never put the combined FIC power of our entertainment channels and our Nat Geo channels behind one show and premiered it day and date with the United States. We are doing that now with Cosmos. Not only will the show premiere in 400 million homes, but in many of those homes it will be on two, three or four channels.”

The new Cosmos will be supported by an extensive global marketing and publicity campaign, including a significant on-air campaign created by the FOX US creative team, adapted by FIC into 44 languages, plus major off-air advertising. Marketing teams in every participating country are localizing advertising and marketing materials as well as launching custom promotions to ensure the campaign resonates with local viewers. The digital campaign will include online advertising, and will leverage social media, including National Geographic’s 37 million Facebook fans.

More than three decades after the debut of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Carl Sagan’s exploration of the universe as revealed by science, Seth MacFarlane teamed with Sagan’s original creative collaborators – writer/executive producer/director Ann Druyan and co-writer, astronomer Steven Soter – to conceive the 13-part series that will serve as a successor to the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original series.

As with the legendary original series, the new Cosmos is the saga of how people discovered the laws of nature and found their coordinates in space and time. The series brings to life never-before-told stories of the heroic quest for knowledge, transporting viewers to new worlds and across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest – and the smallest – scale.

The series invents new modes of scientific storytelling to reveal the grandeur of the universe and re-invent celebrated elements of the original series, including the Cosmic Calendar and the Ship of the Imagination. The most profound scientific concepts are presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is produced by Cosmos Studios, the Ithaca, New York-based company Ann Druyan co-founded in 2000, and Fuzzy Door Productions, MacFarlane's company. Druyan and Soter are the series’ writers. Druyan, MacFarlane, Cosmos Studios president Mitchell Cannold and Brannon Braga will executive-produce the series. Jason Clark will co-executive produce.

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