Apple TV+ has announced that the spin-off series Star City, exploring the Soviet side of an alternate space race, will debut on May 29 with its first two episodes. The eight-episode drama follows cosmonauts, engineers, and intelligence officers in the Soviet space program. It expands the universe of the original series For All Mankind, which returns for season 5 in March.
Star City, a spin-off from the alternate-history series For All Mankind, will premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, May 29, with the initial two episodes available immediately. Subsequent episodes will release weekly on Fridays, concluding on July 10, for a total of eight installments.
The series shifts focus to the Soviet perspective in a timeline where the USSR achieves the first moon landing, depicting events from behind the Iron Curtain. As described in the official synopsis, it is "a propulsive paranoid thriller" that portrays "the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward."
The cast features Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon), Anna Maxwell Martin (Motherland), Agnes O'Casey (Black Doves), Alice Englert (Bad Behaviour), Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon), Adam Nagaitis (Chernobyl), Ruby Ashbourne Serkis (I, Jack Wright), Josef Davies (Andor), and Priya Kansara (Bridgerton).
For All Mankind co-creators Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert serve as showrunners, with Ronald D. Moore as an executive producer. Additional executive producers include Maril Davis, Andrew Chambliss, and Steve Oster. The production is handled by Sony Pictures Television for Apple TV+.
The spin-off was first announced in April 2024 alongside the renewal of For All Mankind for its fifth season, which is scheduled to premiere in March. For All Mankind, which debuted in 2019, has received strong reviews for later seasons, including perfect scores on Rotten Tomatoes for seasons two and four.
Nedivi, Wolpert, and Moore expressed enthusiasm for the project, stating: "Our fascination with the Soviet space program has grown with every season of For All Mankind. The more we learned about this secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived, the more we wanted to tell this story of the other side of the space race. We could not be more excited to continue building out the alternate history universe of For All Mankind with our partners at Apple and Sony."