Kristen Stewart has landed a lead role playing real-life astronaut Sally Ride in the true story of the The Challenger disaster. The role will mark Stewart's first television role, with Amazon Prime Video greenlighting the series.
Titled The Challenger, the series will tell the story of the events leading up to the 1986 tragedy, in which all seven crew members were killed on board the space shuttle, as well as the investigation that followed.
Ride was part of the committees that investigated The Challenger Disaster and the series will explore her personal journey through the investigation.
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The series' logline, via Variety, adds: "We follow Sally, and the rest of the diverse Astronaut Class of ’78, through the ranks of the shuttle program, through initial recruitment and training, professional and personal highs and lows, until Sally’s historic glass ceiling moment as she becomes the first American woman in space."
The Challenger is based on Meredith E. Bagby’s book The New Guys, while Maggie Cohn who penned The Staircase will serve as showrunner as well as writing and executive producing the project.
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Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Kyra Sedgwick will also serve as an executive producer, alongside Valerie Stadler for Big Swing Productions.
Stewart has been extremely busy as of late, with her directorial debut The Chronology of Water being released at the end of last year.
She has also signed on to star alongside Oscar Isaac and Elizabeth Olsen in vampire thriller Flesh Of The Gods.
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Speaking of vampires Stewart, who got her big break in the Twilight series, shared in January that she'd be down for helming a remake of the franchise.
When asked by Entertainment Tonight if she'd consider taking the reigns for a Twlight remake, Stewart said: "I love what all of the directors did with the movies but they were so themselves and weird and kind of like squirrelly and so present in that time when they don't really know what they were yet, like before they blew up.
"Imagine if we had, like, a huge budget, and a bunch of love and support. I would love to re-adapt. Yeah, sure, I'll do the remake. I'm doing it. I'm committed."
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Stephanie is a freelance news writer, who previously covered WWE and AEW for Digital Spy.
After graduating with a degree in history from Queen Mary University, London, she studied journalism at Birkbeck University.
Outside of her work at Digital Spy, she writes about pop culture, with a special focus towards Irish media and how it intersects with politics.
You can read more of her work on her Substack page.
