The First Have a look at ‘Star Metropolis’ Is Right here, and Apple TV’s Spin-Off Period Has Formally Begun

Apple TV has proven itself as the streamer to beat for sci-fi series, producing the likes of Pluribus, Severance, Silo, Sugar, Dark Matter, Invasion, Foundation, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and For All Mankind. And now it’s breaking containment by launching spin-offs of some of those shows, the first of which, the For All Mankind expansion Star City, arrives May 29.

A spin-off of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, focused on Wyatt Russell’s character on the show, is also currently in the works. (Season two of Monarch arrives February 27.)

With For All Mankind kicking off its fifth season March 27, Apple has shared a first glimpse of Star City, revealing the character played by Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon) but not much else. The show is described as “a bold new chapter inspired by the critically acclaimed space-race drama” and “propulsive paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race—when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon.”

In Star City, we get a new perspective on those events: “This time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward.”

Star City will run eight episodes (dropping the first two May 29, with a weekly rollout thereafter) and comes from creators Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert, and Ronald D. Moore. Nedivi and Wolpert are also co-showrunners.

Along with Ifans, the cast features Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey, Alice Englert, Solly McLeod, Adam Nagaitis, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, Josef Davies, and Priya Kansara.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.