None of us are heading into space anytime soon (except maybe Tom Cruise), so it looks like space is coming to us. io9 has an exclusive first look inside the set of Nickelodeon’s The Astronauts, a sci-fi series about kids who find themselves on the unexpected journey of a lifetime.
In this video tour, director and producer Dean Israelite ventures inside the set of The Astronauts, a co-production with Imagine Kids+Family. In the series, a group of kids who’ve gathered to watch the launch of the spaceship Odyssey II end up sneaking inside the abandoned vessel, only to accidentally initiate the launch sequence. They end up trapped, forced to work together to survive and find their way home. As you can see in the video tour, there are a lot of places (and details) the kids have to manage.
In an interview with io9, Israelite said the ship’s design was partially inspired by The Martian, Interstellar, and the International Space Station. However, they wanted to make sure it was unique: “While there is a familiarity to an aesthetic grounded in existing technology, [production designer] Geoff Wallace and I endeavored to make the ship look unlike anything that has come before.”
There was one detail they made sure wasn’t skimped on: Making sure the ship wasn’t kid-sized. Even though they were working with younger actors, the idea was that they were using a ship that didn’t belong to them. As a result, everything is just a bit bigger than they are. “Nothing was designed to be kid-size,” he said. “Our guiding principle was to throw the kids into a realistic adult world, and framed by this design, literally and figuratively, illustrate their coming of age.”
The series stars Miya Cech (Are You Afraid of the Dark?) as Samantha “Samy” Sawyer-Wei, Bryce Gheisar (A Dog’s Purpose) as Elliott Combs, Keith L. Williams (The Last Man on Earth) as Martin Taylor, Kayden Grace Swan (A Black Lady Sketch Show) as Doria Taylor, and Ben Daon (Child’s Play) as Will Rivers.
The Astronauts debuts with the first two episodes on November 13.
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