Apple TV+ is boosting its content with more series orders, including The White Darkness, The Big Cigar, and Constellation. Read on to learn more about each show.
The White Darkness is a limited series starring Tom Hiddleston (The Essex Serpent, Loki), who will also serve as executive producer, and based on David Grann’s nonfiction work of the same name.
The new co-production from Apple Studios and UCP is developed by Soo Hugh (Pachinko, The Terror), who will also co-showrun and serve as executive producer. Mark Heyman (Black Swan, Strange Angel), will co-showrun and executive produce on the series alongside Hugh.
Theresa Kang-Lowe (Pachinko) will executive produce through her company, Blue Marble Pictures, which is currently in an overall deal with Apple TV+.
The White Darkness is inspired by the true-life account of Henry Worsley, a devoted husband and father, a former soldier, a man of deep honor and sacrifice, but also a man deeply obsessed with adventure, manifesting in an epic journey crossing Antarctica on foot.
Starring Hiddleston as Worsley, this is a spellbinding story of courage, love, family, and the extremes of human capacity.
The White Darkness will be produced for Apple TV+ by Apple Studios and UCP. In addition to Hiddleston, Hugh, Heyman, and Kang-Lowe, the series is also executive produced by Caroline Garity of Blue Marble Pictures. This marks the second partnership for Hugh, Blue Marble Pictures, and Apple TV+ following the recently-premiered, broadly and critically-hailed series Pachinko, which Hugh wrote, produced, and showran, and Kang executive produced and is currently in season on Apple TV+.
It also marks the second partnership for Apple TV+ and Hiddleston, who will next star in the upcoming Apple Original series The Essex Serpent.
The Big Cigar is a new six-episode limited series executive produced and written by Jim Hecht (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty), and executive produced and showrun by NAACP Image Award winner Janine Sherman Barrois (Claws, The Kings of Napa), with Don Cheadle (No Sudden Move, Black Monday, House of Lies) on board to direct and executive produce the first two episodes, and based on the eponymous magazine article from Joshuah Bearman (Argo), who will also serve as executive producer.
With André Holland (The Eddy, Moonlight) in discussions to star as Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton, The Big Cigar tells the extraordinary, hilarious, almost-too-good-to-be-true story of how Newton relied on his best friend, Bert Schneider, the Hollywood producer behind Easy Rider, to elude a nationwide manhunt and escape to Cuba while being pursued into exile by the FBI.
Written by Hecht, from a story by Bearman and Hecht, The Big Cigar hails from Warner Bros. Television, where Sherman Barrois and her Folding Chair Productions are under an overall deal.
The drama is executive produced by Hecht and Sherman Barrois, as well as Bearman, Joshua Davis, and Arthur Spector (Little America), through their production company Epic, a division of Vox Media Studios.
Constellation, meanwhile, is a new conspiracy-based psychological thriller drama series starring Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, You Won’t Be Alone) and Emmy Award nominee Jonathan Banks (Mudbound, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), and created and written by Peter Harness (The War of the Worlds, Doctor Who, Wallander).
Emmy Award winner Michelle MacLaren (Shining Girls, The Morning Show, Breaking Bad) is set to direct the new series from Turbine Studios and Haut et Court TV.
Constellation will star Rapace as Jo, a woman who returns to Earth after a disaster in space — only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing.
The action-packed space adventure is an exploration of the dark edges of human psychology, one woman’s desperate quest to expose the truth about the hidden history of space travel and recover all that she has lost.
Co-produced by Turbine Studios and Haut et Court TV, the executive producers are David Tanner (Small Axe), Tracey Scoffield (Small Axe), Caroline Benjo (No Man’s Land), Simon Arnal (No Man’s Land), Carole Scotta (No Man’s Land) and Justin Thomson (Liaison).
MacLaren directs the first two episodes and executive produces with Rebecca Hobbs (Shining Girls) and co-executive producer Jahan Lopes for MacLaren Entertainment. Harness executive produces through Haunted Barn Ltd.
Mirko Parlevliet has been reporting on the entertainment industry since 1998 and founded Vital Thrills to cover the latest streaming, movie, TV, and game news.