Space: the film industry’s final frontier

Could anything be as exciting right now as the new James Bond film, No Time to Die? Yes, quite frankly. Filming is taking place on the world’s first movie to be shot in space.

This week, Russian actor Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko blasted off in a Soyuz MS-19 spaceship alongside veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov to the International Space Station, likely beating Tom Cruise in the race to make the first film in orbit. The movie will be titled Challenge.

Its plot involves a female surgeon (played by Peresild) who is sent to a space station to perform heart surgery on a crew member in zero gravity. Filming is expected to take 12 days before the three head back to Earth.

“It was difficult psychologically, physically and emotionally … but I think when we reach our goal all the challenges won’t seem so bad,” said Peresild at a pre-flight press conference earlier this week, following a four-month training course.

It was announced last year that Mission Impossible star Cruise is set to fly into space with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to shoot a Nasa-backed Hollywood film. The as-yet-untitled film – which Universal Pictures is reported to have pledged an estimated $200m towards – is helmed by Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Lineman.

While we’ve had plenty of films set in fictional space – Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014), The Martian (2015) and Lucy in the Sky (2019) – this new chapter is taking things to a whole new level. Is space the new cultural hotspot? Look out, Pinewood Studios – you could be a fading star.

Yours,

Charlotte Cripps

Culture writer