Cold War Space Race Focus of US TV Project

A US production company is developing a series on the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the wake of World War II and through the apex of the Cold War in the 1960s, the entertainment industry website Deadline.com reported this week.

The untitled series, based on US journalist Matthew Brzezinski’s 2008 book "Red Moon Rising: Sputnik And The Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age,” comes on the heels of the critically acclaimed Cold War television series "The Americans,” which follows the lives of two married Soviet sleeper agents living in the United States in the early 1980s.

Primeridian Entertainment, the California-based production company behind the project, has tapped veteran American screenwriter Nicholas Meyer to develop the series and is also looking to bring Cold War experts on board as consultants, including Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Deadline.com reported.

Nikita Khrushchev was a pivotal figure in the Soviet Union’s space exploration program, launching the first manmade satellite, Sputnik, into space in 1957 and sending Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin out of the earth’s atmosphere to become the first human in space.

The pioneering achievements sparked a frantic race between the Soviet Union and the United States to explore space as the two countries devoted massive resources in vying for extraterrestrial supremacy.

The planned series will center on the competition between the two Cold War superpowers to develop their own space programs based on Nazi Germany’s pioneering V-2 rocket, the first known manmade object to reach space, Deadspin.com reported.

Primeridian is also developing a biographical film based on the life of Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. One of the company’s co-founders is Arcadiy Golubovich, a Russian-born actor and producer.

"The Americans,” which premiered in January, was picked up for a second season by the FX television network earlier this year.