NEW PROJECT: Kristen to play astronaut Sally Ride in 'The Challenger' for a limited TV series

Kristen Stewart will make her TV series-starring debut in The Challenger, a limited series in which she’ll play Sally Ride, the astronaut and physicist who became the first American woman to fly in space. She did this as part of a NASA space shuttle astronaut class of 1978 that was the first to be diversified and not comprised of all white men.  

Kyra Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions developed and brought the project to Amblin and is executive producing with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and Stewart through the latter’s Nevermind production label. Amblin’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey are also exec producers.

Maggie Cohn will serve as the writer and showrunner; her credits include American Crime Story, The Staircase and Narcos: Mexico. This has been the hot property on the TV auction block this week, and Amazon is close to tying it down.

The series is based on The New Guys, a book written by Meredith E. Bagby, who partners with Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler in Big Swing. They are also executive producers.

In some ways, this has the tapestry to tell the successor story to The Right Stuff, which was based on Tom Wolfe’s book about the culture clash that occurred when the cockiest world’s best fighter pilots jumped into the space race that America was engaged in with the Russians. Bagby tells the story of a group that was called by their predecessors ‘The F*cking New Guys,’ as NASA sought to diversify its pilots and crew for the space shuttle program. Ride was the first woman and the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to fly into space. Also in that program was 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. They were also quite brilliant.

In 1983, Ride became the first American woman to fly on the space shuttle, and became an instant celebrity. That joy was short-lived, however, when three years later the space shuttle Challenger blew apart 73 seconds into its ascent, killing all seven members of the crew. 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. Ride died from cancer at age 61 in 2012, a true American hero.

The hope will be to get this ready to time the series in proximity of the Challenger disaster anniversary. That happened 38 years ago, on January 28, 1986. For Stewart, this continues a career evolution which started after the Twilight Saga films, in which she has established herself as a most watchable actress with range.

In a moment where not a lot is selling in the marketplace, how does a plum package like this happen? Sedgwick explains this was a truly homegrown project, and not one that happened overnight:

“This is something we’ve worked on at Big Swing since 2017, me, Meredith and Valerie, about this new class of astronaut recruited by NASA in the early 1970s,” she said. “Sally Ride was among them, and the focus is this newly recruited wild, feral group of astronauts who were all very diverse. And then on an Oppenheimer track, it also tells the story of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster that Ride took part in. Growing up in Florida, Meredith Bagby was obsessed with space and the shuttle, and she also watched the Challenger explode. Meredith got hundreds of hours of interviews with the members of that class, and we have relationships with all those living astronauts and they will be part of our brain trust on the show.

“She wrote the book and it went on the bestseller lists,” Sedgwick told Deadline. “We wanted so much to tell this story as a limited series. Our goal at Big Swing is to tell familiar stories with a new perspective and point of view. I had a relationship with Maggie Cohn, and she fell in love with the book. Valerie had this dream of having Kristen Stewart, and after more than a year of trying to get Kristen this book through back channeling, she read it and she fell in love. Getting Kristen and Maggie was incredible, for a company nobody really knows yet. We are three girls with a dream.

“Then we thought, what better than to bring in Steven Spielberg to help tell this awe-inspiring story of the astronauts who inspired space travel for a new generation? They helped us prepare the pitch that went out to the marketplace, and it has been extremely competitive and we are close to a deal.”

Making Stewart the centerpiece was also interesting in that TV was not an obsession for her.

“She has never done television, but when she read this she became obsessed with telling the story of Sally Ride from her own unique perspective that I won’t even try to paraphrase because she is so eloquent about it,” Sedgwick said. “She was so stunning in these pitch meetings and that was a huge part of why it has been so competitive. She’s so compelling and was so rabid about telling this story about an American hero who had to hide who she was, in that time.

“Who better to play Sally Ride than one of the great actors of her generation? As they say in Hollywood, passion wins the day. Her passion for being an executive producer is vast. As dogged as we were about getting the script to her, she has been that dogged about getting it sold in the marketplace.”

Even though Sedgwick herself is most closely associated with the role of the closer, it was Stewart who played that role in the pitch process.

“Right now when everyone is saying that nobody is buying anything, she would not listen and nor would we because if we had listened to all the times we were told this would be too hard, we would never have gotten this off the ground. Amblin spoke first, Maggie was great, and then they passed it to me, I was the one to pass to Kristen and was the one who got to kvell about her because I’d just seen Love Lies Bleeding. We were all in it to win it.”   

Auction was brokered by WME (which reps Stewart and Amblin) and CAA (which reps Sedgwick, Big Swing and Cohn).

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Vertical acquires distribution for 'Sacramento' for North America, UK and Ireland release

Ahead of its June 8 world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, the road trip buddy comedy Sacramento, directed by and starring Michael Angarano (Oppenheimer), has been acquired by Vertical for distribution in North America, the UK and Ireland later this year.

In addition to Angarano, the starry indie’s cast includes Michael Cera (Barbie), Kristen Stewart (Love Lies Bleeding), and Maya Erskine (Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith). The film tells the story of Rickey (Angarano), an energetic and free-spirited young man with a Peter Pan complex who, following the death of his father, convinces his long-time friend Glenn (Cera) to hit pause on his blissful domestic life and embark on an impromptu road trip across California.

Angarano penned the screenplay with Chris Smith, and they produced the film alongside Bee-Hive Productions’ Stephen Braun, the Wonder Company’s Chris Abernathy and Eric B. Fleischman, and Sam Grey. Irfan Siddiqui served as associate producer.

In a statement on the acquisition, Angarano told Deadline, “Sacramento was a movie-making experience that was truly one of a kind. Each and every crew member believed in the movie we were making and had fun while doing it, which is all you could ever hope for as a filmmaker. It’s also a very personal film for me which is why I’m grateful to have a home like Vertical.”

Angarano noted that Vertical has established itself as “one of the great independent film distributors” and is “constantly demonstrating their willingness to champion movies like ours. We feel like we have found the perfect partner to continue this movie’s journey.”

Stated Vertical Partner Peter Jarowey, “It’s hard to imagine when Michael found time to sleep, but his incredible talent has produced a hilarious and poignant film that we can’t wait to share with audiences later this year. We’re also thrilled to continue our collaboration with Eric, Stephen, and Chris on this project and look forward to many more successful ventures together.”

Jarowey and SVP of Acquisitions Tony Piantedosi negotiated the deal on behalf of Vertical, with Verve Ventures and UTA’s Independent Film Group repping the production.

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Michael Angarano talks about 'Sacramento' and mentions Kristen with Variety

When Michael Angarano was trying to get “Sacramento,” his indie buddy comedy about two friends who go on a road trip to a certain state capital off the ground, the question he’d get was always the same. Does it really need to be set in Sacramento?

“At one point we were ready to shoot the movie in Atlanta — we had the financing and everything,” remembers Angarano, who directed the film, as well as co-wrote it. “And this was for a movie called ‘Sacramento.’ But it’s like why try to cheat it? Maybe, we should we just call it ‘Athens’ or ‘Savannah’?”

And even though Angarano and his co-writer Chris Smith weren’t that familiar with the city that inspired their film, its appearance on a highway sign, informing them of the California city’s distance from Los Angeles, was foundational. For them, Sacramento wasn’t just a destination, it was a state of mind.

“We had just been to a batting cage and we were driving back and we saw the sign and we just played a game of chicken,” Angarano remembers. “It was like, ‘hey, want to go to Sacramento?’ ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’ And it became sort of an inside joke. Like what if you just picked a random place and went there for no reason at all?”

That exchange plays out nearly verbatim in the film that Angarano and Smith finally, after many false starts and abrupt stops, finished. But the version that premieres at the Tribeca Festival this weekend has evolved just as the lives of the people involved with bringing it to the screen have changed in dramatic ways. In “Sacramento,” two estranged college buddies reconnect at a transitional moment in their lives. Michael Cera is Glenn, a soon-to-be father, stressed out by impending parenthood and facing a professional crisis. Angarano plays Ricky, his irresponsible friend whose happy-go-lucky persona masks some deeper personal issues. And though the two actors are longtime pals, they insist they are nothing like the people they play in the film.

“Our dynamic is not the same,” says Angarano. “Mike is not like the strait-laced one and I’m not the wild guy. We’re both pretty similar.”

But Cera notes the years it took to get the film off the ground meant that when cameras actually started rolling, the particulars of their lives had a lot in common with the parts they were playing.

“It’s a movie about these two guys on the precipice of fatherhood who are entering this new chapter,” says Cera. “And when this movie first started coming together that was a few years off for both of us. But it took so long to get started that by the time we were shooting, Mike and I had just entered into fatherhood. So it was very real and immediate to us.”

Making “Sacramento” changed Angarano’s life in other important ways. He met his future wife Maya Erskine after casting her in the film as Ricky’s ex-girlfriend. “Sacramento” ended up taking longer to get off the ground than anticipated, but she stuck with the project and with Angarano. The pair’s son was born in 2021 and they announced they were expecting their second child last April.

“This movie has this weird cosmic energy around it, where it’s life imitating art or art imitating life,” says Angarano. “Small little miracles happened around this film.”

To fill out the cast, Angarano approached Kristen Stewart, who he had dated in the early aughts, to play Rosie, the very pregnant wife of Cera’s character.

“I’ve known Kristen, since we were like 12 years old,” says Angarano. “We did not write it with Kristen in mind. But you get a list of stars when you make anything that the people who control the money are interested in having be in the film. Kristen was obviously on the very top tier of that list. We knew she’d be great in the role and she’s a person who has a history of doing smaller films like this.”

Stewart loved the script and wanted to work with Cera, so she agreed to join the project. That helped secure the financing, as well as a commitment from the movie’s backers to actually shoot the movie in Sacramento and not in an Atlanta suburb. But a few days before filming started, Cera gave Angarano a scare. The director had decided to take trip to Palm Springs by himself to decompress when he got a text message from his star that read, “I have an insane favor to ask.” But when Angarano wrote him back, Cera went silent. And that sent the filmmaker on a downward spiral.

“I texted everybody — the producers, everyone,” Angarano remembers. “I was like he’s pushing it. It’s falling apart.”

Eventually, Cera responded. He wanted to know if he could borrow one of Angarano’s guitars during the shoot. “He let me know that I had put him through hell,” Cera says sheepishly. “I think there was some non-psychotic reason why I didn’t respond. My phone had died or something.”

In the end, not only did the film get made, but Angarano lent Cera his guitar.

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'Sacramento' Stills and BTS Images

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'Love Me' will be released in the US in early 2025 from Bleecker Street and ShivHans

Bleecker Street and ShivHans have partnered to take U.S. rights to the cosmic love story “Love Me,” written and directed by Sam and Andy Zuchero, and starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun. Bleecker Street will co-release the film with ShivHans Pictures, with a U.S. nationwide theatrical release planned for early 2025.

WME Independent has come on board to represent the international rights to the film, beginning in Cannes this week.

“Love Me” made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where it was also awarded the festival’s Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, presented to an outstanding title focusing on science or technology.

In the film, a buoy and a satellite meet online long after humanity’s extinction. As they learn what life was like on Earth, they discover who they are and what it means to be alive and in love. Blending live-action and animation, “Love Me” is anchored by performances by Stewart and Yeun playing a duo that evolves from animatronic machines to human beings in a love story that spans billions of years.

“We are excited to have Bleecker Street onboard as the newest member of our passionate ‘Love Me’ team to bring the film to audiences and theaters nationwide,” said Sam and Andy Zuchero. “’Love Me’ was a collaborative effort from an incredible team of artists and storytellers from Kristen, Steven, ShivHans, 2AM and AGX.”

The film is produced by ShivHans Pictures, 2AM and AgX. Kevin Rowe, Luca Borghese, Ben Howe, Shivani Rawat and Julie Goldstein, with Daniel Bekerman, Christine D’Souza Gelb and Connor Flanagan as executive producers.

Bleecker Street and ShivHans Pictures recently teamed up on Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet” starring Bowen Yang, Academy Award-nominee Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Academy Award-winner Yuh-jung Youn and Joan Chen. The film is a reimagination of Ang Lee’s 1993 Academy Award-nominated film of the same name, based on a script by Ahn and Academy Award nominee James Schamus. Last year, Bleecker and ShivHans also partnered to co-release director Guy Nattiv’s “Golda” starring Helen Mirren, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

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Kristen on the cover of Harpers Bazaar Germany - May 2024

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Kristen on the cover of Porter Magazine - May 2024

 

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She first shot to fame as a child actor, before solidifying her status on the global stage at the age of 18, in one of the highest-grossing movie franchises of all time – the Twilight Saga. Now 34, actor KRISTEN STEWART talks to BILLIE JD PORTER about her electrifying new movie, Love Lies Bleeding, defying Hollywood, and why she’s feeling happier than ever.

On a sun-drenched afternoon in Los Angeles, Kristen Stewart is winding down her latest press tour. We’re in her home office, nestled on a hillside in the Los Feliz neighborhood, overlooking far-reaching views of the city. After a whirlwind first quarter of 2024, this time marks the end of one chapter for Stewart, before her next is written.

Since premiering at the Sundance Film Festival at the beginning of the year, Love Lies Bleeding, the sophomore feature from writer-director Rose Glass, has gripped audiences and critics alike, due in large part to Stewart’s spellbinding portrayal of Lou – a seemingly nihilistic gym manager, whose world is turned upside down when she falls hard and fast for a female bodybuilder.

“I think we were shocked that we could even get this made,” she tells me, as we make our way to her back porch. “Because it's so weird. It’s violent and kind of irredeemable at times, but it makes you look; it’s scary. It’s confronting.”

To box the film into any one of the categories it’s been labeled thus far – action, thriller, romance, mystery, neo-noir – feels reductive. Glass has cited both Showgirls and Saturday Night Fever as influences, while one Letterboxd review calls it, “True Romance for the gays.” Somehow, Love Lies Bleeding invokes the spirit of all these legendary titles, yet is at once in a league of its own: a bold, genre-bending fever dream that oozes sex, vulnerability and surrealism simultaneously.

In amongst this chaos, Stewart’s performance strikes a delicate subtlety, that leaves you moved to tears in one moment, and laughter the next. “I kind of feel like, in the most dramatic moments of your life, it does get hilarious… It’s an odd mix of tones,” she says. “That’s why Rose is so fucking good. You’d think that would be clunky.”

There’s an almost childlike effervescence to the way Stewart speaks about working with Glass, becoming so animated at times that she lifts up from her seat, excitedly remarking at the filmmaker’s fearlessness, her character design, and her flat-out rejection of the “prescriptive bullshit” that many industry executives have come to expect from female-perspective art. “I’m so in awe of her… and it’s been really inspiring. But, at the same time I’m, like, Whew, I am so not there yet.”

Only time will tell. When we meet, Stewart is relishing the last two weeks of calm, before embarking on what is set to be a career-defining project of her own; directing her first feature. The film is based on The Chronology of Water – a piercing 2011 memoir by American writer Lidia Yuknavitch that explores her experiences of addiction, childhood sexual abuse, and ultimately finding both writing and competitive swimming as a means of catharsis.

“I’m in what they call, ‘soft prep’, which sounds kind of weird,” Stewart says. “It’s the dreamy place that you get to live in before you actually have your crew at your disposal.” To some degree, this soft prep has been in motion for over seven years. After gaining rights to the material, she first announced the project at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, before going on to attach British actor Imogen Poots to play the lead. But the journey to bring the project into fruition hasn’t been easy; Stewart has been vocal about her plight in financing the picture as recently as this year, having stated in January that she would quit acting until she could get the film over the line.

“It’s kind of a self-conscious thing to talk about, because it’s hard to get anything made. You know, [a film] that’s not regurgitating something that’s pretty standardized,” she muses. “My movie is about incest and periods and a woman violently repossessing her voice and body, and it is, at times, hard to watch… but it’s gonna be a fucking thrill ride. And I think that’s commercial, but I don’t think that I have any gauge on what that means,” she laughs. “I think people would want to see that, but then… I think maybe people wanna watch movies about, like, Jesus and dogs.”

To bring her vision to life, Stewart is taking production for the film to Latvia – rather than in the movie-making bubble of her native Los Angeles, where she lives with her fiancée, the screenwriter Dylan Meyer. It’s a decision which she tells me is empowering her to have the freedom she needs for a truly explorative process. The small, northern-European country will be playing backdrop to scenes in New York, San Diego, Florida and the Pacific Northwest, spanning three decades of the story. “It’s a fledgling film culture there. Look, I’m all about the way we make movies here [in the US], but I needed a sort of radical detachment. I am not a director yet. I need to make a student film. I can’t do that here.”

There is a raw, self-effacing candor that emanates from Stewart – a multi-award-winning, Academy Award-nominated actor who has been in the entertainment industry since childhood, and who played the lead in one of the highest-grossing movie franchises in history. Despite her position in Hollywood – across acting, producing, and now directing – she speaks about the machine, that she is unarguably a part of, with a sense of distance and impossibly charming cynicism. As we dig into her decision to hold out as long as she has, to create the art she wants to, her passion for the material itself is clear, but there’s something deeper at play too. Her choices feel like a retaliation against an industry where artists, specifically women, are so often forced to compromise on their instincts to succeed.

“[There’s a] thinking that we can check these little boxes, and then do away with the patriarchy, and how we’re all made of it,” she considers. “It’s easy for them to be like, ‘Look what we’re doing. We’re making Maggie Gyllenhaal’s movie! We’re making Margot Robbie’s movie!’ And you’re like, OK, cool. You’ve chosen four… And I’m in awe of those women, I love those women [but] it feels phony. If we’re congratulating each other for broadening perspective, when we haven’t really done enough, then we stop broadening.”

Two days before we meet, Stewart rang in her 34th birthday, an occasion which she tells me she would not have ordinarily celebrated, if it wasn’t for the encouragement of her loved ones. (Meyer, her partner of five years, shared birthday wishes on Instagram, captioning a Polaroid of Stewart cross-legged on a bed and holding their cat, “I like really really love you and am wishing you a meteor shower of good stuff in the year to come.”) But there is a deep gratitude Stewart feels for this specific time in her life.

“I am very, very happy to be my exact age,” she states, contemplating the ways her creative priorities have shifted over time. “As an actor, I’m called upon to serve other people’s visions. You get greedy; it feels good to be called upon… even if you don’t love the thing. I think it’s nice that, as I’ve gotten older, I would much prefer to tailor my experiences to result-oriented goals, versus, just, ‘This is gonna feel good for me right now.’”

Her contentment also seems anchored in the knowledge that, while her experience as a woman in the public eye has been far from easy, it was a precursor to an era that is even more merciless. “Even if we’re still emotionally violent towards women right now, it’s so much more passive aggressive… [Before] it was just so fucking straight up.”

Stewart is shrewd to the fame game and has found ways to navigate the scrutiny. She’s conflicted about social media, on the one hand labeling it fake and performative. “But then I’m like, that is presumptuous and totally reductive because everything you’re seeing, you can see something true about it.” She only has a secret Instagram account that she keeps private and purely for “selfies with friends”.

But there are public-facing parts of the job she has come to enjoy. Her style in particular has evolved into a distinctively playful mix of casual-meets-luxury, bringing an effortless edge to red-carpet looks. “If [fashion] wasn’t part of the job, I would wear the same thing every day… and I wouldn’t know that part of myself, which is actually kind of fun.”

For the PORTER cover shoot, a few days before our meeting (incidentally, for Twilight fans, on the day of the solar eclipse), Stewart loved collaborating with the team and photographer Zoey Grossman to create a story that she wanted to break the mould. “I’m lucky to have done a lot of photo shoots… but it’s always in some chic, mid-century house, and you’re like, lounging fancily around some domestic environment. The whole idea [with these images] was that we wanted to make them all feel stretched. I just read this story about a housewife who realizes she’s a ghost, and I was like, ‘What if [we pretend] I’ve been in this photo shoot for a hundred years?’ I love working with Zoey. You can really try things and do wild shit.”

As we get ready to say goodbye, I’m struck by the unguardedness with which Stewart has spoken; with no publicist and a palpable aversion to the sycophancy that so many in the industry find themselves slaves to. “I’m embarrassed by anything inauthentic,” she laughs, “But then I’m like, what is ‘authentic’?” From where I’m sitting, it doesn’t seem like she needs to look much further.

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Video: Rose Glass talks ' Love Lies Bleeding' and mentions Kristen with BAFTA

 

NEW PROJECT: Kristen will star with Oscar Isaac in vampire thriller 'Flesh of the Gods'

Kristen Stewart and Oscar Isaac are set to star in vampire thriller Flesh of the Gods from director Panos Cosmatos (Mandy).

Isaac and Stewart will portray Raoul and Alex, a married couple in glittering ’80s L.A. who descend each evening from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into an electric nighttime realm. When they cross paths with the mysterious and enigmatic Nameless and her hard-partying cabal, Raoul and Alex are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills and violence.

The film is written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) based on a story by Cosmatos and Walker, and is produced by Adam McKay and Betsy Koch of Hyperobject Industries and Gena Konstantinakos and Isaac for Mad Gene Media.

Domestic rights are co-repped by CAA and WME, with XYZ Films handling international sales at the upcoming Marché du Film at Cannes. The film is set to shoot later this year.

Twilight star Stewart was Oscar-nominated for Spencer and most recently starred in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, which was released in March by A24.

Golden Globe winner Isaac is in production on Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein and is coming off Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, Moon Knight, and Dune.

Director Cosmatos is best known for psychedelic revenge thriller Mandy starring Nicolas Cage, which premiered at Sundance and then played in Cannes.

That 2018 film was his sophomore and most recent feature. Flesh of the Gods marks the third collaboration between Cosmatos and XYZ. They also have Nekrokosm in development with A24.

Walker is best known for writing David Fincher’s Se7en, Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, and Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. He most recently wrote David Fincher’s The Killer.

Oscar winner Adam McKay said: “This director, this writer, these incredible actors, vampires, choice 80’s punk, style and attitude for miles… that’s the film we’re bringing you today. We think it’s wildly commercial and wildly artful. Our ambitions are to make a movie that ripples through popular culture, fashion, music, and film. Can you tell how excited I am?”

“Like Los Angeles itself Flesh Of The Gods inhabits the liminal realm between fantasy and nightmare. Both propulsive and hypnotic, Flesh will take you on a hot rod joy ride deep into the glittering heart of hell,” added Cosmatos. 

Isaac is repped by WME and Goodman, Genow. Stewart is repped by WME and McKuin Frankel Whitehead. Cosmatos is repped by CAA and Weintraub Tobin. Walker is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Ziffren Brittenham.

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