Mars One Coming to TV

Mars One appears to be taking an another step on its long path to the Red Planet with the news out of Hollywood that Lionsgate Entertainment, which has produced his such as Mad Men, and well as film franchises Twilight and The Hunger Games, will be producing a reality based show portraying the organization’s quest to launch the first colonists to Mars.

According to the story from Deadline.com, “For the next several years, the series would be covering the different stages of preparation for the mission, starting with participant selection and the finalists — called candidates — undergoing an 8-year training protocol.

The series’ cast will evolve as candidates in the mission drop out and new ones are brought in. “This is a social experiment that focuses on the people that would sign for something like this — they have to agree to participate and be willing to go on a one-way mission, knowing that if you go, you can never come back,” said Roy Bank, who is producing the project as part of his overall deal with Lionsgate TV.”

As part of the Lionsgate deal, a new selection process will get underway, with winners from this group “merged” with those who have already made it this far through Mars One.

Although it has received quite a bit of criticism, including lurid headlines that it is promoting “a suicide mission,”  Mars One struck back at the critics with last year’s announcement that it was pursuing conceptual studies for its first pieces of hardware, a small Mars lander and accompanying orbiter with Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology respectively.  An Indiegogo campaign to crowdsource funds for the studies finished up on February 9, and did rather well, raising $313,744 of its $400,000 goal.