• The New York Times, Tuesday, April 22, 2008 11:15 AM

Walt Disney Co. is establishing a new production banner--called Disneynature--to deliver two nature films a year starting in 2009. By betting that multiplex audiences are hungry for lavish nature documentaries, Disney is revisiting its corporate retrenchment in 2006, when it reduced the number of movies it released each year to about 12 (from as many as 20), and started marketing them almost entirely under a single brand, Walt Disney Pictures.

Disney CEO Robert A. Iger says the success of "March of the Penguins"--a 2005 documentary from Warner --helped spark the company's interest in the genre. He also says that "Planet Earth," the mini-series from the Discovery Channel and the BBC, delivered blockbuster ratings, and he wishes Disney's name was on it.

Iger is betting the Disney brand will deliver a halo effect in the genre and that its broad appeal will help it expand overseas. The company's films have long been successful in foreign countries, but Disney faces cultural barriers in some developing markets like China and India. Nature documentaries cross borders much more easily.

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