March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step

March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step follows a young emperor penguin on the first great journey of its life. Born on the Antarctic ice, the bird is driven by instinct to leave its birthplace and head for the open sea. Before it can reach the water, it and its parents must cross the frozen landscape, and once they arrive, the film observes how naturally these birds swim and dive. The film is the English-language version of Luc Jacquet's L'empereur, a companion piece to his 2005 documentary about the penguins' annual migration to their breeding grounds.

Jacquet directed and wrote the film; it sits between The Fox and the Child (2007) and Antarctica Calling (2023) in his filmography. Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud and Emmanuel Priou produced it, and narration is provided by different voices for different markets, among them Lambert Wilson in French and Morgan Freeman in English.

The documentary runs 85 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.6 from 936 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 6.9 from 77 votes, so viewer responses are moderately positive across both. Its main cast consists of narrators rather than on-screen performers, which reflects its nature as a wildlife documentary. Its release in 2017 placed it more than a decade after the director's earlier penguin film.