To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Apple this afternoon shared a new video featuring clips from its upcoming Apple TV+ show "For All Mankind" along with commentary from show creator Ronald D. Moore and others who have worked on the series.
"For All Mankind," which stars Joel Kinnaman, features an alternate history that explores what might have happened had the global space race never ended and had the USSR landed the first humans on the moon. In the series, the U.S. will race to get astronauts on Mars and Saturn.
In the new spot highlighting "For All Mankind," Moore says that the space program "captured the world's imagination" when it first happened. "There's something about putting people in spaceships and going places. It's an idea of this optimistic feature where we not only travel in space, but it's been a good thing for all of mankind," he said about the show.
"For All Mankind" was inspired by the Apollo 11 mission and the space race, according to executive producer Matt Wolpert.
In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, watch as the executive producers of For All Mankind discuss the incredible human achievement of landing on the moon. For All Mankind, an Apple Original drama series, is coming this fall to Apple TV+. Get notified when Apple TV+ premieres on the Apple TV app: https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-plus
Acknowledging the bold and daring human spirit that got us to the moon and continues to inspire one generation after the next, "Remembering Apollo 11" highlights the collaboration, the intelligence, and the imagination it took.
Along with the new video, Ronald D. Moore and other show creators, engineers, and advisors did a series of interviews with various publications. Speaking to Inverse, Moore said that Apollo 11 was the catalyst that got him interested in science fiction. He decided to work with Apple because of an existing relationship with Zack Van Amburg, a former Sony executive and now one of the co-presidents running Apple TV+.
"I said to Zack, that the more exciting thing to me, was to do the space program that I felt we were promised and we never got. And that's how the journey to the alternate history version was born. So that's why it's at Apple, it came out of our personal relationship," Moore says.
In a separate interview with Syfy, "For All Mankind" technical advisors Garrett Reisman and Gerry Griffin, both of whom worked for NASA, said that they aimed to make the show as accurate as possible, even when it was difficult.
Getting cathode-ray tube displays, for example, was a nightmare that the production team cheated by using flat-screen TVs and putting a piece of curved glass to simulate the old-school screens. The NASA logo was another difficulty. In watching the trailer, fans may notice the logo is just a little off, like the Bizarro version of the real-life NASA symbol. That's because, as the trio explained, NASA has a policy to only lend support and use of emblems if the piece of media portrays the events of the space program exactly as they happened. Not really a possibility for an alt-history show.
Additional interviews and show details are available from Collider, CollectSPACE, and IndieWire.
"For All Mankind" is one of the TV shows that Apple is working on for its upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service, set to launch this fall. Apple has dozens of shows in the works, and a recap of everything that Apple is working on is available in our Apple TV+ show guide.
Though the first season of the series has yet to debut, Moore says that a second season is already being discussed. The team is getting stories and scripts ready, but Apple hasn't yet officially picked it up for a second season. "We're already moving ahead with planning in case they do," Moore told Syfy.
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