By Kristen Stewart will make her TV series leading role debut in “The Challenger,” a limited series about astronaut and physicist Sally Ride who became the first American woman to fly in space.
Ride did this as part of a NASA space shuttle astronaut class of 1978 – the first to be diversified and not comprised of all white men.
The series is based on Meredith E. Bagby’s book “The New Guys” which deals with the group dubbed ‘The F—ing New Guys’ as NASA sought to diversify its pilots and crew for the space shuttle program.
Ride was not only the first woman but also the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to fly into space. The class also included the first Black and Asian American astronauts, and a married couple.
They passed rigorous tests to become top of the class – with egos, ambition and romance all part of the mix. In 1983, Ride became the first American woman to fly on the space shuttle.
She then became the only astronaut to become part of the presidential commission to investigate the Challenger disaster and reportedly pinpointed the problems with the O-rings that caused the explosion.
Maggie Cohn (“American Crime Story,” “The Staircase”) will serve as the writer and showrunner with Amazon reportedly close to closing a deal for it.
Kyra Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners are executive producing alongside Stewart through her Nevermind production label. Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey also executive produce.
Source: Deadline
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