Showrunners behind shocking new docuseries that follows a group of travelers on life-threatening 5,000-mile Amazon trek lift the lid on footage that was too GRUESOME to include

The showrunners behind a new docuseries that follows a group of travelers on a life-threatening 5,000 mile trek through the Amazon jungle have lifted the lid on the footage that was too gruesome to make it into the exposé.

Back in 2012, a man named Mickey Grosman announced that he was going to lead a hike across South America in a bid to raise money and awareness for cancer research - and filmed the entire thing in the hopes of making a documentary.

Along the way, the group faced a slew of terrifying near-death experiences and serious injuries, and came face-to-face with dangerous wildlife and hostile indigenous tribes - and many began to wonder if they'd ever make it out alive.

The footage from the wild exhibition recently fell into the hands of documentary makers Erin Gamble and David Freid, who combed through over 700 hours of video and quickly realized: the rest of the world needs to see this.

The showrunners behind a new docuseries that follows a group of travelers on a life-threatening 5,000 mile trek through the Amazon jungle have lifted the lid on the footage that was too gruesome to make it into the exposé 

Back in 2012, a man named Mickey Grosman (seen) announced that he was going to lead a hike across South America as a bid to raise money and awareness for cancer research

Along the way, the group faced a slew of terrifying near-death experiences and serious injuries, and came face-to-face with dangerous wildlife and hostile indigenous tribes

Mickey filmed the entire thing in the hopes of making a documentary, and the footage recently fell into the hands of documentary makers Erin Gamble and David Freid

They have now turned it into a docuseries, entitled Expedition From Hell: The Lost Tapes, which will premiere on Max and Discovery this Sunday, May 12, at 10pm EST/PST.

Ahead of its release, the pair sat down with DailyMail.com to discuss the series - and they teased some of the horrific things that the hikers endured.

They also detailed one of the incidents that was so awful they decided not to include it in the show.

'You cannot go from one coast to the other across the Amazon jungle unless you are nuts. It's very dangerous,' Erin dished. 

'They go through areas that are completely [untouched]. There is no trail whatsoever. 

'There's a number of things that happen that are physically dangerous pretty much every day.'

'People are very much traumatized physically throughout the course of this thing,' David added. '[Some] get very close [to dying].' 

When asked about the parts that were too horrific to show in the series, Erin recalled one clip in which the group brutally killed a monkey to eat.

They have now turned it into a docuseries, entitled Expedition From Hell: The Lost Tapes, which will premiere on Max and Discovery this Sunday, May 12, at 10pm EST/PST

Ahead of its release, the pair sat down with DailyMail.com to discuss the series - and they teased some of the horrific things that the hikers endured

'You cannot go from one coast to the other across the Amazon jungle unless you are nuts. It's very dangerous,' Erin dished

'Some of the hunting scenes can be a little bit difficult, especially when they get into areas where there wasn't a lot to eat,' she explained. 

'It's not in the show, but at one point they needed food, and so they killed and roasted a monkey. That was really hard for everybody to watch.'

The pair joked that the footage contained numerous clips of 'grown adults having diarrhea in the jungle' and 'an incredible amount of gross foot and private part shots.'

Spending weeks in the jungle while having to get your own food, water, shelter, and fire makes for 'a fascinating series of misfortunes and ineptitudes that quickly turned what was to be an already challenging expedition into a near constant struggle to survive,' per the show's description. 

Footage from the trailer shows people scaling down an enormous waterfall and swimming through a raging river.

Other parts feature various members of the group struggling to stay on foot amid a horrific storm, falling down a steep hill, and even writhing in pain as someone held a candle to a blister.

Another clip sees the group crossing a rickety old bridge - when suddenly it breaks and one of the members begins to crash through the bottom.

During their chat with DailyMail.com, David and Erin also teased that the adventure involved 'a kidnapping, a prison escape, and a missing person.'

The group had very little contact with the outside world throughout the trek, which made it all the more dangerous.

'Mickey carried a satellite phone and theoretically, that should be able to connect them to the emergency extraction system that exists,' Erin explained. 

She added: 'They go through areas that are completely [untouched]. There is no trail whatsoever. There's a number of things that happen that are physically dangerous every day'

When asked about the parts that were too horrific to show in the series, Erin recalled one clip in which the group brutally killed a monkey to eat. Some of them are seen during the hike

Footage from the trailer show people scaling down an enormous waterfall and swimming through a raging river

'The problem with the satellite phone is that it is intermittent when it works - the canopy in the jungle can make it really unreliable - and at the time when they were doing this, it also ran off of batteries.

'So there were times when he would run out of batteries or there were times when it just wouldn't register because they were in areas where it couldn't register. 

'There's a lot of the trip [where] they really were absolutely beyond the reach of civilization.'

David added that Mickey told the group there was a button on the phone that would send a GPS marker to people back home in case of emergencies - but he wasn't so convinced that it actually worked.

'This button on this sat phone kind of gave people a false sense of security. We asked [participants of the hike during our interviews], "What do you think would have happened if you pressed a button? A black hawk helicopter would just come down through the canopy, and you'd be just away to some local hospital?"' David explained.

'The more you dig into that the more you realize they really didn't know what would happen [if he pushed the button], and more than likely, there was no helicopter coming to save them. It's just this button on a sat phone.'

The duo explained that as they started to decipher the hundreds of tapes to turn into a docuseries - most of which were unlabeled and out of order - they started to question Mickey's true motives

'This isn't just the story of an expedition. This isn't just the story of a group of guys that are marching from one coast to another,' Erin explained.

Other parts feature members of the group struggling to stay on foot amid a horrific storm, falling down a steep hill, and even writing in pain as someone held a candle to a blister (seen)

Another clip features the group crossing a rickety old bridge - when suddenly it breaks and one of the members begins to crash through the bottom

Erin and David explained that as they started to decipher the hundreds of tapes to try to turn it into a docuseries they started to question Mickey's true motives

'Who is this guy really? Was he somebody with purely noble motivations?' David remembered wondering.

'You learn early on that he had a form of melanoma cancer and he's had cancer in his family so it is an important topic for him.

'A lot of [the group] came onto the trip under the auspices that they were doing something for charity.

'But as it unfolds, his motivations do become a little questionable, and things go sideways.

'The mere fact that he brought three cameras into the jungle, I think says a lot about his motivation.' 

David said it was obvious that Mickey would do anything to get the perfect shot, and that it seemed he didn't fully grasp how much danger they were really in.

'Was he worried? No. I think he thought in the back of his mind, no matter what he could save the day, he could make things work,' David continued.

'And if something did go wrong as long as the camera was rolling, it was okay.' 

Erin also shared: 'Someone who traveled with Mickey on the expedition said Mickey's mentality was, "If you send a soldier up a hill, and the soldiers head gets blown off, that was a good use of that person, because now you know where the enemy is."'

David admitted that he even wondered if everything they saw on the tapes was real.

'There's this one shot from the bottom of a really steep ravine, maybe 100 feet [down],' he revealed.

David said it was obvious that Mickey (seen) would do anything to get the perfect shot, and that it seemed he didn't fully grasp how much danger they were really in

During their chat with DailyMail.com, David and Erin also teased that the adventure involved 'a kidnapping, a prison escape, and a missing person'

To see the full extent of what they endured, make sure to tune in to Discovery or Max to watch the docuseries when the first two episodes premiere this Sunday

'The camera is looking up at the bottom of a bridge. This is high production value stuff - somebody went out of their way to set up the shot. 

'They're looking up and they're panning across in a tight shot of the bridge - and then the camera stops. 

David teased: 'The deeper you go into this story, the more episodes you watch, every layer unfolds another mystery and it really isn't what you think it is'

'And right when the camera stops, one of the members of the expedition falls through the bridge. To me, that made me wonder if everything I was seeing was real.

'The deeper you go into this story, the more episodes you watch, every layer unfolds another mystery and it really isn't what you think it is.' 

'We discovered that there was a much deeper question of what actually happened on this expedition,' Erin added.

'A lot of the the series is sort of dealing with our own journey to try to understand what actually happened, what is true and what isn't true.

'Someone asked us, "Did you get all of your questions answered at the end of this project?" The truth is, we got answers that we didn't know we had questions to.'

No one actually finished the entire 5,000-mile hike except for Mickey - or so he says. 

To see the full extent of what they endured, make sure to tune in to Discovery or Max to watch the docuseries when it premieres this Sunday.