MOVIE NEWS – Apple TV+ is turning For All Mankind into a full franchise in 2026: Season 5 launches on March 27 with 10 weekly episodes through May 29, and on that very same day the first spin-off, Star City, premieres – taking the same alt-history universe behind the Iron Curtain, into the Soviet space program that put the first man on the Moon in 1969.

For All Mankind is one of Apple TV+‘s quietest but most critically acclaimed success stories: an alternate history sci-fi drama running since 2019, built around the question of what would have happened if the Soviet Union had reached the Moon first in 1969. The show follows the space race from the American side across decades and time jumps – from a functioning Moon base in the alternate 1980s to the colonization of Mars – and has earned some of the strongest reviews on the platform, with Season 4 holding a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 28 critics. Creators Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi have publicly stated since 2023 that they envision approximately seven seasons spanning at least 70 years of alternate history.

Season 5 arrives on March 27 and picks up the story on Mars, where the Happy Valley colony has grown into a thriving settlement – but peace is fragile. Earth’s governments are pushing for law and order over the colony, and the Martian settlers are pushing back, setting up what promises to be a full-on planetary independence arc. Returning cast members include Joel Kinnaman, Edi Gathegi, Toby Kebbell, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña, and Wrenn Schmidt, joined by newcomers Mireille Enos, Costa Ronin, Sean Kaufman, Ruby Cruz, and Ines Asserson. The season’s delay from a planned mid-2025 window was partly caused by the 2023 WGA writers’ strike and partly by the parallel development of Star City; filming began in July 2024 and wrapped in December, with the show’s extensive Mars-set visual effects pushing the final premiere to March 2026.

On May 29 – the same day the Season 5 finale drops – Star City launches with two episodes, then continues weekly through July 10 for a total of eight episodes. The spin-off rewinds to the pivotal alt-history moment at the heart of the franchise – the Soviet Moon landing of 1969 – and this time tells the story entirely from within the Soviet space program, following the cosmonauts, engineers, and intelligence officers who powered the mission and lived with its consequences in the paranoid, claustrophobic world behind the Iron Curtain. Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon) leads the cast as the Chief Designer, the driving force behind the Soviet space program; Anna Maxwell Martin plays Lyudmilla Raskova, the head of the KGB surveillance department at Star City. The ensemble also includes Adam Nagaitis (Chernobyl) as Valya Markelova, a highly respected cosmonaut; Agnes O’Casey as Irina Morozova, a new member of the surveillance team; Alice Englert as Anastasia Belikova, an untested female cosmonaut; Josef Davies as Sergei Nikulov, a young, brilliant engineer at Soviet Ground Control; Ruby Ashbourne Serkis as Tanya Markelova, a cosmonaut’s wife navigating the confined world of Star City; plus Solly McLeod and Priya Kansara. The series is produced by Sony Pictures Television for Apple TV+, with the same creative team behind the flagship show.

Source: MovieWeb