Will Arnett Joins Limited Series ‘The Challenger’

(Left) Will Arnett stars in ‘Is This Thing On?’ (Right) ‘The Chronology of Water’ director Kristen Stewart.

Preview:

Will Arnett is boarding limited series ‘The Challenger’.
Kristen Stewart is starring in the series as astronaut Sally Ride.
Prime Video is producing the show.

Now that Prime Video has officially landed a deal to produce new NASA-flavored limited series ‘The Challenger,’ it’s all systems go. And, as it prepares for production launch, Deadline brings word that Will Arnett (‘Arrested Development’) is boarding the show.

He’ll play George Abbey, Director of Flight Crew Operations for NASA’s Space Shuttle in 1980s, opposite Kristen Stewart, who has the role of Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

Maggie Cohn created the show, and it has some big name producers, including Kyra Sedgwick alongside Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television.

Related Article: Kristen Stewart to Play Astronaut Sally Ride in TV Series ‘The Challenger’

What’s the story of ‘The Challenger’?

The new series will adapt Meredith E. Bagby’s book ‘The New Guys’, which follows the NASA space shuttle astronaut class of 1978, the first to be comprised of a diverse group including women and minorities.

They were labelled ‘The F*****g New Guys’ by their predecessors. Ride was the first woman and the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to fly into space. Also in that program were the first Black and Asian American astronauts, and a married couple. They passed all the rigorous tests to become top of the class, and egos, ambition and romance were part of the cultural clash.

In 1983, Ride became the third woman, and first American woman, to fly into space on the shuttle Challenger, heading into orbit twice. She became an instant celebrity.

That joy was short-lived, however, when the space shuttle Challenger blew apart 73 seconds into its ascent on another mission without Ride, killing all seven members of the crew in 1986. Ride then became the only astronaut to become part of the Rogers Commission, a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, and it later came out that she pinpointed the problems with O-rings that became stiff at low temperature, and that turned out to be the reason for the explosion.

Where else can we see Will Arnett?

Arnett most recently starred in Bradley Cooper’s ‘Is This Thing On?’ opposite Laura Dern. He will next co-star in Tony Gilroy’s upcoming movie ‘Behemoth!’