Plimsoll Productions, the company behind natural history titles such as Apple’s Tiny World and Disney+’s A Bug’s Life, is fishing for a U.S. sale of its shark infested reality competition series.

The company is launching Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters on ITV this evening and is hoping that solid ratings will be chum in the water for broadcasters and streaming services searching for more shark content.

The series takes a group of celebrities to the Bahamas – the shark capital of the world – and tasks them with diving with a different species of shark, with the breeds getting bigger and more dangerous each time.

Plimsoll boss Grant Mansfield was out in LA last month to pitch the format to broadcast networks and streamers and two of his key lieutenants – Head of Factual Entertainment Karen Plumb and Creative Director, Factual Entertainment Andrea Jackson – are confident that it will sell Stateside.

“America is the home of Jaws, and the appetite for shark-driven storytelling hasn’t waned. The format delivers super-adrenalised, high-drama, big-stakes entertainment – exactly what U.S. audiences respond to,” Jackson told Deadline. “Shark Week and SharkFest prove America loves sharks, and we all know America loves celebrities. Put the two together, and it’s a natural hit.”

U.S. broadcasters are increasingly keen on shark programming, particularly this summer.

Nat Geo’s SharkFest, which is in its 13^th year, kicked off around the holiday weekend with series including Sharks Up Close With Bertie Gregory. Titles also include Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story and Shark Quest: Hunt for the Apex Predator.

Discovery Channel’s Shark Week follows later this month with Dancing With Sharks, hosted by Tom Bergeron and Great White Sex Battle, as part of its 37^th iteration of the event strand.

But both cable broadcasters are also now facing a challenge from Netflix, which has tipped its toe in the water with two major shark-themed projects. All The Sharks, which launched on July 4, sees four teams of shark experts photographing the most sharks they can and the winner gets $50,000 for their marine charity. The series is produced by Best Production Company.

It also has Shark Whisperer, produced by Boardwalk Pictures and Underdog Films, which follows shark conservationist Ocean Ramsey, who regularly attracts millions of views on Instagram. The 90-minute doc made it to number seven in Netflix’s weekly ratings chart with 6.1M views and reached the top ten in 40 countries.

All of this bodes well for Plimsoll.

When asked how Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters was different to other reality shows, Plumb told Deadline, “This is not a parlour game. The danger is very real, bringing high drama and high stakes to every dive. The series positions itself as entertainment with purpose, reframing how audiences perceive sharks and pushing the boundaries of conventional reality formats.”

The UK version of the show features celebrities Dougie Poynter, Ade Adepitan, Rachel Riley, Helen George, Ross Noble, Lenny Henry and Lucy Punch, who also faced “fear-inducing challenges”.

There are a number of high-profile stars that might be enticed by a U.S. version including Mad Men star January Jones, who has been filmed swimming with sharks, as well as the likes of Demi Lovato, Rob Lowe and Brad Paisley, who are seemingly shark fans.

She added that the series offers a “natural-history adventure money can’t buy”. She said that these stars weren’t cast through the “usual booking routes but through strategic outreach”.

“We prioritized wit, emotional authenticity and intelligence. Our celebrities’ reactions, growth and transformation in the wild are central to the show’s impact. Rather than competing, the celebrities work together throughout their journeys. The result is a premium format that blends adrenaline and insight in a way that’s rarely seen in factual entertainment,” she added.

Bringing together wildlife filmmaking with reality competition is unusual. Plumb said that it brought together natural-history teams with entertainment crews. “Producing in a wild environment meant carefully laid plans were frequently upended, especially by weather and tides. The sharks were among the most consistent elements of the production; many are recurring characters in Bimini’s waters, but as wild animals, their behaviors could shift in seconds,” she said. “Filming underwater posed its own set of challenges: Once submerged, producers lost visual and audio contact. With no video village or comms, every scene required exacting preparation and careful mapping.”

Bimini, the Bahamas island where the show was filmed, is home to up to ten different shark types including Hammerheads, Bull sharks and Tiger sharks. 

Jackson said that to make an entertainment show of this scale, it needs to be done in the Bahamas. “Nowhere else on the planet has the variety and number of sharks required to pull it off,” she said.

There are also plans to create a production hub in Bimini and is encouraging international broadcasters to co-produce series to bring down the production costs. “Bimini offers more than just shark density; it’s a viable production hub with real cost advantages for international broadcasters and streamers,” she added. “By shifting toward a more reality-focused format with fewer celebrities, productions can increase the number of dives and reduce overhead. Larger episode commissions would drive down per-episode costs, and back-to-back filming across territories could unlock economies of scale.”

Unfortunately, don’t expect to see any great whites on screen any time soon. Plumb said, “Not in these waters… Great whites don’t frequent Bimini, and for safety reasons, interacting with them would require cages, which is at odds with the show’s open-water ethos.”