Kristen Stewart to play Sally Ride in Amazon’s ‘The Challenger’ in Atlanta
Actress Kristen Stewart is scheduled to come to Atlanta in late summer for a new limited Amazon series about the Challenger space shuttle explosion four decades ago.
Dubbed “The Challenger,” its home base will be Atlanta’s Shadowbox Studios, with production set to start Aug. 24 this summer and run through Jan. 29, 2027, according to local crew union IATSE 479.
Stewart, a director and Academy Award-nominated actor whose breakout role was Bella in the “Twilight” series of films, is set to play Sally Ride, the first American woman in space on the Challenger in 1983, three years before the disaster happened.
Amazon greenlit the series in March based on a book by Meredith E. Bagby called “The New Guys,” according to Variety.
According to a logline provided by the producers, the series will track the “events leading up to the tragedy, and the shocking investigation that followed.” The film will include the 1986 Rogers Commission interrogating NASA about the explosion along with the personal journey of commission member Ride.
Maggie Cohn, who has worked on HBO Max’s “The Staircase” (shot in metro Atlanta) and FX’s “American Crime Story,” will serve as showrunner.
Series executive producer Kyra Sedgwick, who played a detective who hailed from Atlanta in TNT’s “The Closer” from 2005-12, told Variety “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.”
Georgia has seen a decline in new TV series in the past three years as California has aggressively induced productions back to Hollywood with more tax credits.
The pending arrival of a series the size and scope of “The Challenger” is considered good news for the state’s once-thriving TV and film business.
Only six scripted TV series are shooting in Atlanta right now, according to the Georgia film office. They are CBS’s soap opera “Beyond the Gates,” Hulu’s “Reasonable Doubt,” Passionflix’s “Black Dagger Brotherhood” and three Netflix series: “All the Sinners Bleed,” “Free Burt” and “Scooby Doo: Origins.”
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
