‘The Good Whale’ Podcast Dives into the Real-Life Fight to Save the Orca Star of Free Willy

Serial Productions is ready to share a whale of a tale.

The New York Times and the podcast studio behind “Serial” and “S-Town” are releasing “The Good Whale,” a six-part podcast hosted by Daniel Alarcón.

PEOPLE has an exclusive first listen of the trailer for “The Good Whale,” which launches on Nov. 14. The podcast follows the real-life fight to release the orca actor who played the titular whale in the 1993 film Free Willy.

The Good Whale Trailer

Free Willy is a family drama about an orphan, Jesse, who befriends a young killer whale, Willy, who was separated from his pod and placed in captivity. The film ends with Jesse leading Willy to freedom so the animal can rejoin his family.

According to a release from “The Good Whale,” after Free Willy became an unexpected hit, fans learned the orca who played Willy in the movie — a killed whale named Keiko — was ill and living in a pool at an amusement park. The revelations caused an uproar that led Warner Bros, the studio behind Free Willy, to seek a way to release the animal into the wild.

Those determined to help with Keiko’s release found that reintroducing a whale to the open ocean wasn’t as easy as Free Willy made it look. This true story takes place in Mexico City, Iceland, and Oregon before ending in Norway. It involves a slew of trainers and scientists dedicated to giving Keiko a shot at a better life.

“The Good Whale” covers the challenges animal experts faced in the years they spent trying to prepare Keiko — a whale who entered captivity as a calf and was raised by humans — for life as a wild animal and explores if the project paid off in the end.

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“There is a lot of genre-bending going on in ‘The Good Whale,'” Julie Snyder, the executive editor of Serial Productions, said in a statement about the upcoming podcast. “Because Daniel Alarcón is a novelist and a reporter, the podcast is a literary campfire epic, a scientific exploration, and then – in a bit of a left turn – it’s got a bit of Broadway musical thrown in, too. It’s one of the most inventive stories I’ve ever heard.”

“The Good Whale” launches on Nov. 14, wherever podcasts are available and on the NYT Audio app. New York Times All Access and Audio subscribers will get exclusive early access to the entire series on that date. All other listeners will get access to the first two episodes of the podcast on Nov. 14, with subsequent episodes released weekly.

On Nov. 19, a Spanish-language version of the first episode will also be available on Radio Ambulante.