Science Fiction

Now streaming on Peacock for the very first time, the psychedelic satire helmed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet tackles the famous conspiracy theory that director Stanley Kubrick helped the U.S. government fake the Apollo 11 Moon landing by using the cinematic trickery he employed on 2001: A Space Odyssey a year earlier.

Such wild conjecture deserved an equally wild screen adaptation (an edge-of-your-seat political thriller in the vein of Argo just wouldn't work here), and that's exactly what screenwriter Dean Craig set out to achieve once he sat down to write the drug-fueled odyssey of Moonwalkers, which doesn't even know the meaning of the phrase "play it safe."

Craig, whose screenwriting CV includes Death at a Funeral — both the 2007 original and its 2010 American remake — cleverly uses the Kubrick conspiracy as more of a jumping off point for a Strangelove-ian farce involving a Vietnam-scarred CIA agent (Ron Perlman), a failed rock band manager (Rupert Grint), and a narcotic-addled layabout (Robert Sheehan) trying to pull a faux Moon landing out their butts against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of London, circa 1969. SYFY WIRE recently hopped on Zoom call with the writer for a groovy look-back at the oft-overlooked comedy.