A limited series about astronaut Sally Ride, with Kristen Stewart in the lead role, has officially been cleared for launch at Prime Video.
The Amazon-owned streamer has formally greenlit the drama, called The Challenger, after nearly two years in development. The series, inspired by Meredith E. Bagby’s 2023 book The New Guys, comes from Kyra Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions, Amblin Television, and Stewart’s Nevermind Pictures. Maggie Cohn (The Staircase, Impeachment: American Crime Story) adapted the book and serves as showrunner, and James Hawes (Slow Horses) will direct.
The Challenger will be Stewart’s (Spencer, the Twilight films) first lead role in a TV or streaming series. The series will chronicle Ride’s path to becoming the first American woman in space and later her role on the commission investigating the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.
“Sally Ride’s courage and brilliance changed history, and we couldn’t imagine a more powerful actor to bring her story to life than Kristen Stewart,” said Peter Friedlander, head of global television for Amazon MGM Studios. “The Challenger is an inspiring story about breaking barriers, and we’re thrilled to collaborate with Big Swing Productions, Amblin Television, Nevermind Pictures, Maggie Cohn, and James Hawes to share it with our global Prime Video audience.”
Big Swing Productions initially developed the book and brought it to Amblin and Prime Video. Big Swing’s Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler are executive producing with Cohn, Hawes, Bagby, Steward, Nevermind’s Dylan Meyer and Maggie McLean, and Amblin TV’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey.
“Meredith, Valerie, and I at Big Swing have been passionately developing this project since 2017, and we are thrilled to be partnering with Amblin and Amazon MGM Studios,” said Sedgwick. “There is no one better than Maggie Cohn to bring to life the complex story of the Challenger and the new class of astronauts recruited by NASA in the early 1970s, all through the eyes of an American hero, Sally Ride.”
Prime Video describes The Challenger this way: “As the members of the 1986 Rogers Commission interrogate the complex inner workings of NASA to find what, or who, was responsible for the Challenger’s doomed fate, the show explores commission member Sally Ride’s personal journey. 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.”
Stewart is repped by WME, McKuin Frankel and Viewpoint; Sedgwick, by CAA, Range Media Partners, Schreck Rose and Origin PR; Cohn, by CAA, Entertainment 360 and Jackoway Austen; and Hawes, by CAA, 42 Management & Production in the U.K., and Johnson Shapiro.
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