National Geographic’s ‘The Real Right Stuff’ Documentary to Premiere on Disney+ This November

the real right stuff premiere

Disney+ is all about the Mercury 7, America’s first team of NASA astronauts, with a new TV series remake of Philip Kaufman’s space drama classic The Right Stuff debuting on the platform. And a new documentary about the real men behind the Mercury program set to join it. The Real Right Stuff is a documentary about the Mercury 7 from National Geographic that has just set its premiere on Disney+ this November.

Disney+ announced that National Geographic’s The Real Right Stuff documentary, which follows the beginnings of the space race, will premiere on the streaming platform on Friday, November 20. Directed and produced Emmy-winning filmmaker Tom Jennings (Apollo: Missions to the Moon, Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes), The Real Right Stuff tells the “gripping account of NASA’s Project Mercury program, which revolutionized America’s role in human space exploration and inspired future generations of space enthusiasts” without modern-day narration and interviews typical of the documentary format.

Instead of narration and interviews, Jennings employs never-before-seen footage and newly synced audio, including the tense moments following the Mercury-Redstone 4 flight, rare early radio and video recordings, new research materials from Tom Wolfe, newly digitized John Glenn home movies captured on 8 mm and 16 mm film, and rare photographs from LIFE Magazine showing the home lives of the Mercury 7 astronauts.

You can see how that approach plays out in the trailer released by Disney+ below.

Composed by James Everingham for Bleeding Fingers Music and produced by EGOT winner Hans Zimmer and Emmy-nominated Russell Emanuel, the film’s orchestral score was recorded remotely by a socially distant 44-piece orchestra in May 2020.

The documentary joins Disney+’s new TV series The Right Stuff, which adapts of Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book of the same name, which was previously turned into a movie back in 1983.

Here is the synopsis for The Real Right Stuff:

The Real Right Stuff tells the remarkable true story of the nation’s first astronauts, the original Mercury 7, and pulls from hundreds of hours of archival film and radio broadcasts, interviews, home movies and other rare and never-before-seen material to catapult viewers back to the late 1950s. The two-hour documentary, from National Geographic, complements the Disney+ original scripted series “The Right Stuff” which will premiere its season finale on the same day.

The Real Right Stuff is produced by 1895 Films for National Geographic. For 1895 Films, Tom Jennings serves as executive producer and director. The film is edited and produced by David Tillman and produced by Chris Morcom. For National Geographic, Simon Raikes is executive producer.

The Real Right Stuff premieres on Disney+ on November 20, 2020.