The Cult of NatureBoy began streaming in the US on Hulu and for bundle subscribers through Hulu on Disney+ on April 28, 2026, with the wait for viewers outside the US being relatively short. Internationally, the series will be available to stream starting July 15, 2026, across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where it will be available via Disney+. This is because Hulu content can be found on Disney+ internationally, so anyone in those areas who wants to watch it will be able to do so soon.
The Cult of NatureBoy is a docuseries that shares the story of Eligio Bishop, also known as NatureBoy on the internet, who in 2016 was using social media to bring people into a group that he referred to as Carbon Nation while urging these individuals to leave their families behind and come together in what he called a self-defined Black utopian society.
In the beginning, it had been an alternative lifestyle community, but over time, it transformed into something much worse. In March 2024, a DeKalb County, Georgia, jury found Bishop guilty of three counts of rape and false imprisonment and three counts of electronic transmission of sexually explicit material. His sentence was that he would spend the rest of his life in prison without parole and an additional ten years.
The commission of The Cult of NatureBoy to stream and produce a major streaming production is the first major project for Zandland, a production company located in the United Kingdom. ABC News Studios partnered with Zandland in making the docuseries. The founder of Zandland and its CEO, Ben Zand, had stated that the project had taken a long time to develop.
According to him, the team had been working on this story for several years, and it was immediately apparent to them when they began working on this project that they were witnessing one of the greatest and most unsettling cult stories of their generation, because unlike many of the other cult stories, it did not happen in isolation; it was happening live, online to a worldwide audience.
What is The Cult of NatureBoy actually about?
The Cult of NatureBoy centers on Eligio Bishop, who attracted a huge audience on social media through his charm and charisma. His audience then became his followers, and he formed what he claimed would be a Black utopia in a rural section of Costa Rica that completely rejected mainstream society and technology through his movement called Carbon Nation.
While acting as a spiritual leader, he began to call himself the Messiah as time went on. Because of this, the entire atmosphere of Carbon Nation had morphed into one of control, coercion, and manipulation, with increasing amounts of violence.
The docuseries is built around extensive footage that the group itself captured, alongside firsthand testimony from former members and victims, as well as from online investigators who had been tracking Bishop and his group in real time as everything was happening.
That last element is what makes this series particularly interesting, because so much of what Carbon Nation did was done out in the open on social media; there is a whole community of people who watched it all unfold and documented it as it happened.
At Bishop’s sentencing, the judge described him as a master manipulator and said he was probably the classic definition of a narcissist she had ever seen. Bishop responded by telling his victims he forgave them.
Who made The Cult of NatureBoy and how to watch it?
The Cult of NatureBoy was directed by Ben Zand, with Lucie Ridout as showrunner for Zandland. Muriel Pearson serves as executive producer, and David Sloan is senior executive producer for ABC News Studios. The fact that this is Zandland’s first major streaming commission makes the scale of the project even more notable, and that ABC News Studios came on board alongside them gives the reporting side of the series a strong institutional backing.
The full official description of The Cult of NatureBoy says it traces Carbon Nation from its earliest days as an alternative lifestyle community through Bishop’s 2024 trial and life sentence. So this is not a story without an ending, as viewers get to see the full arc, from the very first social media posts that pulled people in, all the way through to a courtroom and a verdict.
For viewers in the US, all four episodes of The Cult of NatureBoy are available right now on Hulu and on Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. For viewers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, the series arrives on Disney+ on July 15, 2026. No release date has been confirmed yet for other international regions outside of EMEA.
Edited by Sroban Ghosh