Oscar nominee Michelle Williams has signed on to play Christa McAuliffe in “The Challenger,” a true-story drama about the infamous NASA space shuttle that exploded just over a minute after launch.
McAuliffe was a New Hampshire school teacher who was selected as part of a NASA program to include teachers among the astronauts participating in the space shuttle program. McAuliffe was set to become the first teacher in space and was planning to teach two classes to her students from space.
But 73 seconds after the launch of Challenger on January 28, 1986, the shuttle exploded and disintegrated before a nationwide TV audience, killing McAuliffe and the other six astronauts aboard. The space shuttle program was put on pause for nearly three years, during which a federal investigation discovered that NASA had neglected its safety standards and ignored warnings from its own engineers.
Martin Zandvliet, director of the Oscar-nominated Danish film “Land of Mine,” will direct this film from a script by Jayson Rothwell. Ben Renzo of Argent Pictures will produce with John and Art Linson.
Williams, who earned her fourth Oscar nomination in 2017 for her supporting role in “Manchester By The Sea,” is starring alongside Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed in the Marvel film “Venom,” which will be released by Sony Pictures this weekend. She is repped by WME, Brillstein Entertainment and Bloom, Hergott.