SPACESHIP EARTH Trailer

Watch other people confine themselves and lose their minds in Spaceship Earth, a documentary that’s receiving an interesting release from American distributor Neon.

Biosphere 2 was created to test whether a habitable, self-sustaining environment could be created. Its glass and steel structure looked like something straight from science fiction, but it was actually science pushing closer to what writers have imagined for decades. In the early ’90s, eight people entered Biosphere 2 for a planned two-year stay, seeing if humans could live in environments of our own creation on Earth and beyond. Of course, it did not go well, but lucky for us the weirdness was extremely well-documented.

Putting all this footage together is director Matt Wolf, who’s made his fair share of documentaries before and will hopefully take this beyond the obvious story. To say this has become more relevant to our lives since its premiere at Sundance earlier this year is obvious (it received excellent reviews, by the way), giving Wolf a chance for a major breakout.

Neon, perhaps sensing the possibility, are reconfiguring their release strategy and testing it out with Spaceship Earth. It’s getting the new normal, meaning a same-day VOD release (at a price of only $3.99) as its premiere in the few drive-in theaters still open. And, being Neon, it’ll also hit its streaming partner Hulu simultaneously. The interesting wrinkle is the announcement of pop-up screenings in select cities, and while details haven’t been announced, these will allegedly be following all social distancing/quarantining guidelines. So, they’re trying to keep the communal viewing experience alive, an experiment that will hopefully go better than its subjects did.

Spaceship Earth is directed by Matt Wolf. It will be released in all sorts of ways in the US on May 8th, 2020. Further release dates are not currently known.

Will you watch this film, and if so, how? Let us know in the comments!