Apple TV+ Lands Three New Series

Apple TV+ has landed the new limited series The Big Cigar and The White Darkness, as well as the psychological thriller Constellation.

The Big Cigar tells the true story of how Huey P. Newton relied on Bert Schneider, the Hollywood producer behind Easy Rider, to elude a nationwide manhunt and escape to Cuba while being pursued by the FBI. André Holland (The Eddy, Moonlight) is in talks to star, with Don Cheadle set to direct and executive produce.

Based on the eponymous Playboy magazine article from Joshuah Bearman (Argo), the series is written by Jim Hecht (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty). NAACP Image Award winner Janine Sherman Barrois serves as showrunner and executive produces alongside Cheadle and Hecht. Bearman, Joshua Davis and Arthur Spector (Little America) also executive produce through their production company, Epic.

The Big Cigar hails from Warner Bros. Television, where Sherman Barrois and her Folding Chair Productions are under an overall deal.

Apple TV+ also picked up The White Darkness, based on the nonfiction book by best-selling author David Grann. Produced by Apple Studios and UCP, the series will star Tom Hiddleston in the lead role as Henry Worsley, a devoted husband and father, a former soldier and a man of deep honor and sacrifice, who is also deeply obsessed with adventure. This manifests itself in an epic journey to cross Antarctica on foot.

Hiddleston, Soo Hugh (Pachinko, The Terror), Mark Heyman (Black Swan, Strange Angel) and Blue Marble Pictures’ Theresa Kang-Lowe (Pachinko) and Caroline Garity will executive produce. High and Heyman will co-showrun.

Constellation, a conspiracy-based psychological thriller starring Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, You Won’t Be Alone) and Emmy Award nominee Jonathan Banks (Mudbound, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) was also picked up by the streamer. Created and written by Peter Harness (The War of the Worlds, Doctor Who, Wallander), the series sees a woman return to Earth after a disaster in space, only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing. It explores the dark edges of human psychology, following her desperate quest to expose the truth about the history of space travel.

Emmy Award winner Michelle MacLaren (Shining Girls, The Morning Show, Breaking Bad) is set to direct the new series from Turbine Studios and Haut et Court TV. Executive producers are David Tanner (Small Axe), Tracey Scoffield (Small Axe), Caroline Benjo (No Man’s Land), Simon Arnal (No Man’s Land), Carole Scotta (No Man’s Land), Justin Thomson (Liaison) and Harness. Rebecca Hobbs (Shining Girls) will executive produce the first two episodes, alongside co-executive producer Jahan Lopes for MacLaren Entertainment.