Apple Remembers Apollo 11 with New ‘For All Mankind’ Trailer

Apple TV+ For All Mankind Trailer Credit: Apple
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To commemorate the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing this month, Apple has released a second trailer for its upcoming Apple TV+ series, For All Mankind, teasing the new series while reflecting on the original Apollo 11 moon landing.

For All Mankind is one of several shows that Apple is expected to include in its lineup when it debuts its Apple TV+ streaming service later this year.

The series, which is being developed by Ronald D. Moore of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica fame, envisions a world where the U.S.S.R. got to the moon first and the global space race never ended. The series will star Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, Wrenn Schmidt, Shantel VanSanten, Sarah Jones, and Jodi Balfour.

The trailer, which is the second one for the series released to Apple’s new Apple TV+ YouTube Channel, includes clips from the show itself along with commentary by Moore and others behind the show.

Moore and the other producers behind For All Mankind were also interviewed by a variety of publications, including Collider, Inverse, Syfy, CollectSPACE, and IndieWire, where he has shared many more details on what inspired him to create the series and specifically to work with Apple. In terms of the series itself, Moore notes that it was the Apollo 11 moon landing that was the catalyst for the idea, and it was his existing relationship with Zack Van Amburg — one of the two former Sony TV executives who joined Apple as the driving force behind Apple TV+ — that brought him to specifically partner with Apple in order to develop the series.

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.

Ronald D. Moore, speaking to Inverse

As Inverse points out, the alternate history that For All Mankind postulates actually came closer to happening than many people realize, as the Soviet Union had already picked a cosmonaut to head up a mission to the moon, but that mission was ultimately cancelled as a result of setbacks encountered by the Soviet space program after the death of its Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev.

This was what Moore saw as a key turning point in the Cold War space race, and as a result he latched onto it with the premise that Korolev lived and was able to keep the Soviet program together and keep the funding going, making it to the moon before the U.S. and thereby stoking U.S. pride unwilling to concede the space race to the Soviets.

In order to make the show as authentic as possible, Moore also called on the talents and expertise of NASA flight director Gerry Griffin and engineer and former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman to serve as technical directors. The goal was to create an alternate storyline yet still keep everything as accurate as possible to the time period, and some of the challenges they faced.

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.

Syfywire

Speaking with Collider, Moore also added that he had a great deal of creative freedom in working with Apple, contradicting previous claims by some producers that Apple is difficult to work with.

It was pretty loose. The nature of the show was such that I didn’t need to push a lot of creative boundaries. It’s not a show that’s about graphic content, or violence or sex. I didn’t have any of that, as part of what we were doing. It just wasn’t an issue for me, in general. It felt like a very loose, creative environment. I was pretty much able to tell the story, in the way that I wanted to tell it. I never ran into barriers. That’s all I really know about it.

Ronald D. Moore, in an interview with Collider

The first season ofFor All Mankind will be coming to Apple TV+ when it launches this fall, with ten one-hour episodes. Moore adds that they’re already talking about a second season internally, although he acknowledges that Apple hasn’t officially picked up another season as of yet.

The new For All Mankind trailer remembering the Apollo 11 mission is actually the second production Apple has put together in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the major events of the space race. Back in May, Apple released its first Apple TV+ short, Peanuts in Space, to celebrate the Apollo 10 mission that served as a recon mission to scout the lunar surface in preparation for the big Apollo 11 landing.

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