Will Arnett Blasts Off in Prime Video's The Challenger, Teaming With a Twilight Star

Here’s one for anyone with even a passing interest in space history, 1980s NASA, or random but surprisingly excellent sitcom actors popping up in serious TV dramas. Prime Video has a new series on the way called 'The Challenger', and it’s already luring a rather eye-catching cast.

Will Arnett Suits Up for NASA (Kind Of)

Will Arnett—yes, the man most will forever associate with 'Arrested Development', shouting about 'The Final Countdown', and the voice of LEGO Batman—has officially signed on to join 'The Challenger'. In this, he’ll swap out the comedy for a slightly more buttoned-up role, as NASA official George Abbey.

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Abbey’s the bloke who put Sally Ride on the crew list for that historic Challenger mission in 1983, making her the first American woman in space. Not only a major NASA power-broker of the time, but a critical influence on pushing the astronaut corps well beyond the old military lads’ club.

Kristen Stewart in the Cockpit

Sharing top billing is Kristen Stewart, going from 'Twilight' vampire to pioneering astronaut. She’ll be playing Sally Ride, who’s at the heart of the whole project, both literally and, let’s face it, in terms of getting people to actually watch.

Source Material & Setting

The show pulls its inspiration from Meredith E. Bagby’s 2023 book The New Guys. That book focuses on the new, more diverse wave of astronauts who came through in the late 1970s and early ’80s, shaking up all those Apollo-era assumptions about who was ‘fit’ to be sent up into orbit.

The Prime Video adaptation is sticking to that spirit: the official description promises the story of Sally Ride and the 1978 astronaut class—moving from their initial recruitment, through NASA’s notorious training gauntlet, on to personal and professional successes and setbacks, and ultimately to Ride’s glass ceiling-shattering flight aboard Challenger in ’83.

Of course, dark history looms in the background: this is the same Challenger that exploded during lift-off in 1986, killing all seven crew on board. Sally Ride—having already become a spaceflight icon—was later assigned to the accident investigation commission, which should make for some fairly heavy drama.

Who’s Behind the Scenes?

• Maggie Cohn (who has previous with true crime adaptations like The Staircase and Impeachment: American Crime Story) is running the show—she’s credited as creator, showrunner, and writer.
• She’s joined by a hefty crew of executive producers: James Hawes, Kyra Sedgwick, Valerie Stadler, Kristen Stewart herself, Dylan Meyer, Maggie McLean, Darryl Frank, and Justin Falvey.

No air date yet—Amazon ordered the limited series back in March, but they’re keeping their cards close for now.

It’s not every day you see a castlist like this attached to a NASA drama. And honestly, there’s something about Will Arnett turning up in the same programme as Kristen Stewart, both navigating 1980s space politics, that’s got just the right amount of strange energy.

'The story of Ride 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 her historic glass ceiling moment as she becomes the first American woman in space.'