Mark McNeill received about $750,000 from New Zealand On Air to film a four-part documentary on the University of Otago's Dunedin Multi-Disciplinary Health and Development Study (also known as the Dunedin Study), which will air on TV One either later this year or next year.
The Dunedin Study has followed the lives of 1037 people born in Dunedin in 1972 and 1973 from their birth to the present day, with almost all aspects of their physical and mental health examined when they come in for assessments.
The information gained from the study has formed the basis for more than 1100 publications.
McNeill said he chose to make a documentary on the Dunedin Study because it had produced "so much information about human beings and what makes us who we are".
The documentary was being edited, with parts of it shot in locations around Dunedin and overseas.
He said it would be finished this year and he hoped to sell it to offshore networks.
"The study is really well known in scientific circles around the world, but it would be fantastic if we could make ordinary people more aware if it."
The show would focus on the science involved in the study, and topics it would look into included the significance of people's early years on later life, nature versus nurture and the effects of living in the modern world, he said.
Previous series McNeill has produced include Nigel Latta's The Politically Incorrect Parenting Show and Epitaph.
The director of the study, Prof Richie Poulton, said the documentary would be interesting to the viewer and he hoped it would turn some people on to science.
"Because it's about how people's lives turn out, it is inherently interesting to most people.
"We are all kind of amateur psychologists," Prof Poulton said.
It would also be a great way of thanking the people who participated in the study, and Prof Poulton had arranged for every participant to get a copy of the documentary.
He had been shown footage of it and was impressed.
"Mark himself is an ex-scientist and so he understands the science and respects it," he said.
Prof Poulton said the Dunedin Study was arguably "the most detailed study of human health and development that has ever been undertaken".
