The Right Stuff isn’t getting another season at Disney+. Friday evening, news of The Right Stuff’s cancellation started to circulate online, potentially pulling the curtain closed on the property for good. According to the initial report from Deadline, the National Geographic series will no longer air new episodes on the Disney-owned streamer.
Instead, the producers behind the show — Warner Brothers Television — will shop it elsewhere in hopes of getting it picked up for additional episodes. The report suggests TNT and HBO Max could both end up ordering more episodes of the series, two entities owned by WarnerMedia — the same conglomerate behind the production company.
Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio also has his name attached to the project and was able to secure $13.7 million in film credits by moving production from Florida to California for the second season. that’s the fourth-highest incentive offered under California’s film credit program.
The series adapts Tom Wolfe’s non-fiction novel that serves as a deep dive into the earliest days of NASA and the United States’ first space efforts. Disney’s synopsis for the show can be found below.
“Based on the iconic bestseller by Tom Wolfe, “The Right Stuff” is an inspirational look at the early days of the U.S. Space Program and the incredible story of America’s first astronauts, the Mercury Seven. At the height of the Cold War in 1959, the Soviet Union dominates the space race, and America fears it is a nation in decline. Newly-formed NASA has the monumental task of sending a man into space, and its engineers estimate they need decades to accomplish the feat. They are given two years.”
It adds, “Dubbed Project Mercury, the program recruits and trains just seven astronauts from a handful of the military’s best pilots. Within days of being presented to the world, the Mercury Seven become instant celebrities, forged into heroes before they achieve a single heroic act. At a time when many wondered if America’s glory days were behind it, The Right Stuff is an aspirational story about how ordinary human beings can achieve the extraordinary. As much about who we are today as it is about historic achievements, the series evokes the wonder of this singular era, when the free world looked towards a new horizon of hope as we first stepped off the bounds of our only home to venture into the vast unknown.”
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