William Gallagher
Apple TV+ hit "For All Mankind" has been renewed for a fifth season, and a spin-off is also going back to the beginning for a new look at the Soviet space race.
"For All Mankind" was one of the first shows announced by Apple TV+ back at its launch in 2019, and is an alternative view of the space race. While it now seems a long way since its starting point of having the Soviets be the first to land astronauts on the moon, the drama has explored the entirely different reality that would have created.
Now according to Variety, Apple TV+ has renewed it for a fifth run, and at the same time commissioned the producers to create a spin-off. With a working title of "Star City," the spin off will again start back with the Soviets beating America to the moon.
"Star City" will then "explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain," says the show's pitch as seen by Variety, "showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward."
The spin off is being created by the same team behind "For All Mankind," which is led by Ronald D. Moore. Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi will be showrunners on the new series.
"Our fascination with the Soviet space program has grown with every season of 'For All Mankind,'" Wolpert and Nedivi said. "The more we learned about this secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived, the more we wanted to tell this story of the other side of the space race."
"We could not be more excited to continue building out the alternate history universe of 'For All Mankind' with our partners at Apple and Sony," they continued.
There has been no announcement of streaming dates for either "For All Mankind" season 5, or "Star City" season 1. Process was greatly impacted by Hollywood strikes in 2023.
All four seasons of "For All Mankind" are streaming now on Apple TV+.
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
5 Comments
Personally, I'm excited for this if it's true. For All Mankind has been one of my favorite AppleTV+ shows these past 4 seasons and would love to see Star City go back to the beginning of the space race and show us what the Soviets went through to be first on the moon and how that affected the space program and country as a whole. In US TV shows we always paint Russia/USSR as the enemies, and seeing how they view the US as the enemy from their POV could be pretty interesting and make for lots of water-cooler discussions.
There’s a little more of Star City in Constellation, too.
Time for a completely new story tbh. This particular well is getting dry. Spin offs are. Ever as good as the original and happen because the writers have run out of new ideas and just want to rehash old ones.
The art to a good service is knowing when to say no. A pretty smart person once said that.
how about the moon is a harsh mistress?
Or the long earth series
or the bridger stories
or The Legacy of Herot (might get accused of being an extended alien rip off, but really a story of what can happen when you mess with an ecosystem you don’t understand )
For something completely different how about a Royal Navy napoleonic wars series? Eg hornblower ot Aubrey/Maturin.
or the scarlet pimpernel
Will any of the actors from the current show get cameos? Or roles? We've already seen some interaction between the two sides.
"Hi, Bob."