Kristen Stewartis set to play the first American woman in space. She’ll star asSally RideinThe Challenger, a new miniseries detailing Ride’s brief, eventful career with NASA.Deadline reportsAmazon MGM Studios are on the verge of picking up the project for Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.
The Challengeris based onMeredith Bagby’s 2023 non-fiction bookThe New Guys; it covers NASA’s 1978 astronaut class, which broke from NASA’s traditional recruitment pool of military aviators to seek out more diverse candidates to crew the then-new Space Shuttle. It will focus on Ride, who became the first American woman in space, the youngest American in space, and - although she kept her personal life a secret for her entire lifetime - the first LGBT astronaut. The rights to the book were acquired byKyra Sedgwick, who will produce the series alongside Stewart andSteven Spielberg. It will be Stewart’s first-ever leading role in a TV series, but that was no impediment to the project, says Sedgwick, “She has never done television, but when she read this she became obsessed with telling the story of Sally Ride from her own unique perspective that I won’t even attempt to paraphrase because she is so eloquent about it.” She then added, “Who better to play Sally Ride than one of the great actors of her generation?” Although no release date for the series has yet been announced, the intention is to release it to coincide with the 40th anniversary of theChallengerdisaster in 2026.
Who Was Sally Ride?
Born in Encino, California in 1951, Ride earned a doctorate in astrophysics from Stanford University, and enrolled in NASA’s astronaut training program. She excelled in training, and soon became the space agency’s first female astronaut, overcoming enormous institutional sexism along the way. The male-dominated NASA was not prepared for a female astronaut; when asked if sending one hundred tampons for her week-long mission would be “the right number”, Ride deadpanned “That would not be the right number.” Ride successfully flew in two Space Shuttle missions in 1983 and 1984, but her planned third mission would be canceled following theChallengerdisasterof 1986. In the wake of that tragedy, Ride was appointed to the Rogers Commission that investigated what had caused the shuttle to explode moments after liftoff; Ride used her NASA sources to secretly acquire and pass on information to fellow Commission memberRichard Feynman. In 1987, Ride resigned from NASA, and served in a variety of educational and academic posts for the rest of her life. Ride died of pancreatic cancer in 2012 at age 61; at the time of her death, she was in a domestic partnership with tennis playerTam O’Shaughnessy, and had previously been married to fellow astronautSteven Hawley. The intensely private Ride never discussed her sexuality publicly.
The Challengerwill be produced by Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions, alongside Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and Stewart’s Nevermind production label. The series will be written and showrun byMaggie Cohn, a veteran ofAmerican Crime Story,Narcos: Mexico, andThe Staircase.
The Challengeris nearing a deal with Amazon MGM Studios;no release date has yet been announced. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
