This Space Movie Is Not Like The Others

Wild Wild Space Comes to HBO

Last week, Wild Wild Space hit HBO and Max.

Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin and Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries, the movie examines the rise of commercial space through the lens of three start-ups. I started making the film almost seven years ago and had many, many struggles along the way, but, well, now it’s real and it’s glorious. The Oscar-winning director Ross Kauffman, producers Jaye Callhan and Claire Sinofsky and editor Hypatia Porter turned my stumbling and fumbling into something special.

I could not be more biased (obviously) but do think this film is not only funny, dramatic and important but also very original in its story-telling. Almost every space movie produced to date - both fiction and non-fiction - captures a bygone era in which rockets and astronauts and satellites were the things of governments. It’s always our best and brightest pilots and engineers solving tough problems and being washed in glory.

Space, however, has changed. It’s very much a business now and comes with all the trappings that entails. Wild Wild Space is a real look at what building rockets and satellites is like in this moment and time. It’s the raw truth about what is actually happening.

It’s also a rare, unvarnished window into start-up life. Most of our start-up stories have been manicured and shaped by marketing departments. This is not that movie. If you want to see exactly what it’s like to live and operate in Silicon Valley and try and build a high-risk company, you will like this film.

Anyway, I hope you’ll watch it and enjoy it. (Will have another movie for you soon on Netflix.)

The film was inspired by my book When The Heavens Went on Sale, which is out now in paperback. It has the double sticker and everything.

Away from Wild Wild Space’s premiere, I wrote a feature story recently on Noland Arbaugh, the first patient to receive Neuralink’s brain implant. And another piece on a start-up trying to revamp the cryonics industry.

As ever, I hope you enjoy those too.

Thanks!!