managing director Amanda Hill sought to produce film adaptations to extend the arm's brand of nature programming. The two were inspired by returns for Deep Blue (2003) and Earth (2007), which were theatrical versions cut from their respective nature documentary series. In June 2010, BBC Earth entered a deal with Evergreen Films, based in the United States, to produce a film featuring dinosaurs. By the following November, BBC Earth entered a deal with Reliance Big Entertainment to finance the production of three films, including Walking with Dinosaurs. The deal had initially attached Pierre de Lespinois of Evergreen Films and Neil Nightingale to co-direct the film. Barry Cook, who joined the film in March 2010, eventually replaced de Lespinois as director. The total production budget was . About 70% of the budget was covered when IM Global, a finance and sales company backed by Reliance, sold film rights to various distributors at the American Film Market in November 2010. The budget was further covered by tax breaks provided for filming in Alaska and in New Zealand. IM Global covered only 15% of the budget directly. Forbes called Walking with Dinosaurs an independent film with an unconventionally large budget since the production did not originate at a major studio. Nightingale explained, "It was originally funded by... Reliance, and then we sold it pretty quickly to 20th Century Fox for most of the world, and to a range of other distributors in a few other countries, and that's not an unusual path for an independent film — in other words, a non-studio film which doesn't originate from a big studio." Filming The film features computer-animated creatures in live-action settings. Live-action footage was filmed in New Zealand and in the southern part of the U.S. state of Alaska. Director Nightingale said, "[They] have that kind of temperate climate which represents the period very well. The world was a bit warmer then, so they would have had 24 hours of sunshine in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter." Filming began in 2011 in Alaska, where Evergreen Films is headquartered. In the second half of 2011, more than were working out of Evergreen's office in the Alaskan city of Anchorage. While the film's dinosaurs lived in Alaska during the Late Cretaceous period approximately years ago, they lived more in the northern part of the state due to the climate at the time.