The alternate-history space race series For All Mankind will be continuing to a fifth season on Apple TV+, and it will also be getting a spin-off. The streamer seems to be shoring up its lineup of originals as it gave the greenlight to a second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters last week. The renewal of For All Mankind has been expected as it is one of the streamer’s flagship franchises and the fourth season finale definitely pointed toward a continuation. The show has also been well-received by critics and viewers, currently holding a cumulative 93% Fresh Rating and 82% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes across its first four seasons. The renewal has the show at a notable point seeing as streaming originals typically wrap up around the third or fourth season mark. For All Mankind is now past that threshold and is on track for the seven-season plan that the creators have for the series. Apple TV+ head of programming Matt Cherniss had the following to say about the renewal:
With each new season, For All Mankind continues to build out a fascinating world and capture global audiences through high quality storytelling that has been so skillfully developed by Ron, Matt and Ben. There is so much to explore and, we along with our partners at Sony, can’t wait to dive into this next chapter of the engrossing For All Mankind universe.
In addition to the upcoming fifth season, the universe of For All Mankind will expand with the spin-off series Star City. The press release gives the following description of the project:
Star City is a propulsive, paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing 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 humanity forward.
For All Mankind co-creators and executive producers Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi will be helming the new series and had the following to say about the spin-off:
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.
No casting has been announced yet and it will likely be 2025 before Star City and Season 5 of For All Mankind have their premieres. Other Apple TV+ shows from the current season awaiting word on their fates are Strange Planet, The Changeling, and Constellation.
This announcement brings the Cancellation/Renewal score for the 2023-24 season to 22 renewed sci fi and fantasy entries (42% of shows tracked) vs. 11 cancelled and ended (21%). You can see the breakdown of the numbers and the full list of shows for the current and prior seasons at our Cancellation Watch Page.
For All Mankind takes place in an alternate history where Russia is the first country to land a man on the Moon. This ignites the space race as the United States and the Soviet Union pour massive resources into the exploration of space and the colonization of the Moon and other planets in the solar system. The show typically jumps ahead about a decade at the end of each season and the fifth year will kick off somewhere around 2012 in the alternate timeline. It stars Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten, Jodi Balfour, Wrenn Schmidt, Krys Marshall, Coral Peña, and Edi Gathegi.
We are approaching the end of the broadcast network regular season and I expect more announcements to come over the next month. You can see the status of all this season’s shows at this link. And be sure to follow this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for updates and breaking news.
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