ASICS makes a nature film about people who barely move

A nature film with people as the subject

On 30 September 2026, ten days before World Mental Health Day, ASICS releases Human Nature, which it calls a new nature documentary.¹ The film is narrated by Sigourney Weaver and, in the release's own words, turns "the lens on humans" to show how "our modern-day habitats are quietly changing the way we move."¹ Adweek describes a ten-minute film that opens like Planet Earth and follows its specimens through their habitats: Janet on video calls in a cubicle, Hannah on a sofa with three screens, Minato scrolling through his phone.²

The work comes from the agency Golin Ketchum London, with Knucklehead as production company and Rob Leggatt as director.³ The choice of narrator carries the genre. When Planet Earth reached American television on Discovery in 2007, Weaver replaced David Attenborough as its narrator.⁴ She played the primatologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist in 1988 and serves as honorary chair of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.⁵ Her voice brings the authority of wildlife film with it, and ASICS points that authority at the living room.

Three grades borrowed from conservation

Alongside the film, ASICS introduces what it calls "the world's first Movement Conservation Status", developed with Professor Brendon Stubbs.¹ It sorts people by weekly movement into three grades. Active means 150 minutes or more, At Risk means 30 to 149 minutes, and Endangered means less than 30 minutes.¹ The thresholds draw on guidance from the World Health Organization, Sport England, NHS England and the United States physical activity guidelines.¹

The grades rest on the brand's State of Mind study, conducted in July 2026 with 34,000 participants in 31 markets.¹ According to ASICS, 53 percent of adults fail to meet the recommended activity guidelines and 23 percent fall into the Endangered grade. People in that grade score 60 out of 100 on the brand's State of Mind measure, against 71 for the Active grade.¹ The release adds a forecast in the same register: by 2035, 56 percent of adults in the markets studied, around 2.3 billion adults, are projected to be At Risk or Endangered.¹

The vocabulary does the communicative work. A survey result reported as a percentage is a statistic. The same result reported as a conservation status turns the reader into a member of a threatened population and gives the brand the role of the conservation body issuing the warning. ASICS completes the frame by inviting people to become an ASICS Movement Conservationist and join a global community.¹

Movement designed out of daily life

The film's argument is about environment rather than willpower. "We've built a world that makes movement optional," says David Raichlen, Professor of Biology and Anthropology at the University of Southern California, in the release.¹ The study supplies the habitat details. People report spending 86 percent of their waking day not moving, 41 percent regularly run errands online instead of in person, and 41 percent of 18 to 24 year olds use AI for tasks they used to do themselves.¹

That framing lets ASICS address people who would never describe themselves as runners. The specimens in the film are office workers and couch dwellers, not athletes. The problem the brand names is the shape of modern life, and the remedy it offers is small enough to fit into it.

Another chapter of Sound Mind, Sound Body

Human Nature is the latest step in a positioning that begins in January 2021, when ASICS makes its founding philosophy its business direction and attaches commissioned science to it.⁶ Gary Raucher, Global Head of Marketing, ties the film back to the name: "Our name comes from the Latin phrase Anima Sana In Corpore Sano - a Sound Mind in a Sound Body."¹ He adds: "For more than 75 years, ASICS has been guided by the belief that movement transforms not just the body, but also the mind."¹

The study behind it keeps growing. The 2024 edition covers more than 26,000 participants in 22 markets;⁷ this one covers 34,000 in 31. The call to action has a history too. The first State of Mind Index in 2022 puts the minimum effective dose of movement at fifteen minutes and nine seconds.⁸ Since then the figure has run through the brand's work: the Desk Break Clause of 2024 is a contract clause entitling staff to a fifteen minute movement break,⁹ Everyday Escape in October 2025 compares fifteen minutes of movement with a wellness holiday,¹⁰ and the 2026 campaign is called 15 Minutes to Thrive.¹

Adweek places the film in a sequence of celebrity casting, after Brian Cox in 2024 and Natasha Rothwell in 2025.² Each campaign uses a borrowed format, a boss's warning, a wellness concierge, now a wildlife documentary, to carry the same claim. Year after year, ASICS attaches its name to the idea that a quarter of an hour of movement changes how people feel. Human Nature applies that claim to the population as a whole.