Liz Hannah and Amy Pascal are teaming up again. The respective co-writer and producer of “The Post” are adapting Martha Ackmann’s non-fiction book “The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight” as a miniseries, Deadline reports. Amazon has already put the project into development.
Entitled “Mercury 13,” the miniseries will be set in 1961, “just as NASA launched its first man into space.” It will center on “a group of women [who] underwent secret testing in the hope of becoming America’s first female astronauts,” the source details. “They passed the same battery of tests at the legendary Lovelace Foundation as did the Mercury 7 astronauts, but they summarily were dismissed by the boys club at NASA and on Capitol Hill. The USSR sent its first woman into space in 1963; the United States did not follow suit for another 20 years.”
Hannah is writing and will serve as showrunner. She and Pascal are among the project’s executive producers.
“I am thrilled that this team will be producing this important American Story,” said Ackmann, a journalist and author who often writes about history’s game-changing women. “Their persistence and passion for the project truly honors the spirit of the splendid women who made up the team of the Mercury 13.”
Another limited series about the Mercury 13 is in the works at ITV Studios America, Deadline notes. Jessica Chastain is producing the project, whose working title is also “Mercury 13.”
Another story about previously unacknowledged women in the space race, “Hidden Figures,” made a major mark at the box office this year. The biopic centers on Katherine G. Johnson,(Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), brilliant women of color who worked as mathematicians during the early days of the space program. “Hidden Figures” spent nearly 10 months in theaters and grossed over $169 million domestically.
Hannah is also writing “Only Plane in the Sky,” a drama that takes place on Air Force One in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and a female-driven anthology series for Universal Cable Productions.
As for Pascal, she’s working on Hulu series “LA Woman” with Lynn Shelton (“Your Sister’s Sister”), Liz Tigelaar, and Elizabeth Cantillon (“The Nightingale”). “Molly’s Game,” in which Chastain portrays a former Olympian who organizes an underground poker ring, and Lisbeth Salander story “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” are among her upcoming movies. “Molly’s Game” opens January 5 and “Spider’s Web” is expected October 19.
Ackmann previously wrote a book about pioneering black female baseball player Toni Stone, “Curveball.” Her next book, “Vesuvius at Home: Ten Days in the Life, Loves and Mystery of Emily Dickinson,” will hit shelves in 2018.
