Bravo has announced that actors and friends Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman will star in and co-produce Long Way Round, a new reality series chronicling the duo's four-month long transcontinental motorcycle journey. The six-episode series will air later this year.
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"We live in such a comfortable and easy time that it doesn't do yourself any harm to go and test yourselves and survive with just the bare essentials," said McGregor. "This is something that I've always wanted to do, it's a challenge."
Currently training in the UK for the event, McGregor and Boorman will begin their journey in late April starting in London. The pair plans to arrive at their final destination of New York City, by the end of July.
The journey will be made by motorbike, with one train, plane and boat to get them across the seas. Both men will undergo training in a variety of areas including nutrition, self-defense, first aid, off road skills, bike maintenance, basic foreign language and cultural awareness skills and hostile environment training from former UK Special Forces Soldiers.
Long Way Round will show the actors in a way the audience has never seen them before, utterly left to their own devices and foregoing their more comfortable lifestyle. Their journey is will take them over 20,000 miles, circumnavigating the longest continuous landmass on earth through the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Siberia, Alaska and Canada before arriving in the United States.
Undoubtedly, they will encounter hardships along the way, including cultural and language barriers as they pitch tent and attempt to live off the land. The journey is not only a test of their endurance, but a cultural lesson too as they will take part in a range of activities native to the lands they traverse.
McGregor is best known for his movie roles in Moulin Rouge, Trainspotting, the Star Wars trilogy and more recently starred in the Golden Globe nominated film Big Fish. Boorman, the son of famed director John Boorman (Hope and Glory, Deliverance), is also a movie veteran with a multitude of supporting screen credits including Deliverance, Excalibur, The Serpent's Kiss, The Emerald Forest and many more. The two actors met eight years ago on the set of The Serpent's Kiss, where they discovered their mutual passion for motorcycles and kick-started an enduring friendship.
Long Way Round is produced by David Alexanian of Santa Monica based Elixir Films and Russ Malkin of London based Image Wizard TV.
Long Way Round was the title of a 1994 episode of NBC's ER drama in which McGregor guest starred as a convenience store robber.
