Damien Chazelle/Ryan Gosling Neil Armstrong biopic gets prime Oscar release

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Even though it didn’t walk away with the top prize LA LA LAND was still able to dance the Oscar night away with six wins, most impressively for best director, making Damien Chazelle the youngest winner ever. Now the man has the world in his young hands, and he’s using that power to follow-up LA LA LAND with a biopic about the Neil Armstrong, which has just gotten a prime Oscar release date.

Universal Pictures has announced the movie FIRST MAN, which chronicles the life of Armstrong, will be released on October 12, 2018, and will begin filming early 2017. Though no other movie is in that slot, it will have to compete with the second week business of AQUAMAN, which arrives October 5. 2018.

The film is still set to star Ryan Gosling as Armstrong in the movie based off the book, “First Man: A Life Of Neil A. Armstrong” by James Hansen. The movie will focus on the years between 1961-1969 and how Armstrong played an intergral role in one of the most dangerous and important missions in human history — landing on the moon. Here is the books synopsis:

“Upon his return to earth, Armstrong was honored and celebrated for his monumental achievement. He was also—as James R. Hansen reveals in this fascinating and important biography—misunderstood. Armstrong’s accomplishments as engineer, test pilot, and astronaut have long been a matter of record, but Hansen’s unprecedented access to private documents and unpublished sources and his interviews with more than 125 subjects (including more than fifty hours with Armstrong himself) yield this first in-depth analysis of an elusive American celebrity still renowned the world over.

In a riveting narrative filled with revelations, Hansen vividly recreates Armstrong’s career in flying, from his seventy-eight combat missions as a naval aviator flying over North Korea to his formative transatmospheric flights in the rocket-powered X-15 to his piloting Gemini VIII to the first-ever docking in space. These milestones made it seem, as Armstrong’s mother Viola memorably put it, “as if from the very moment he was born—farther back still—that our son was somehow destined for the Apollo 11 mission.”

Between WHIPLASH and LA LA LAND Chazelle has proven one of the most visceral and passionate directors working today. His blend of style and character development are absolutely seamless, and though FIRST MAN will no doubt be a more low-key film I can’t wait to see how he brings the life of this American icon to…life. Word is that he has also blocked traffic on the moon for the opening anti-gravity dance number.