Coming Soon to Blu-ray: The Countdown Begins for the HD Version of 'From the Earth to the Moon'

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On Tuesday, July 16, the 50th Anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 - the mission to land two astronauts on the Moon by the end of the 1960s - HBO Home Entertainment and Imagine Entertainment will release the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon on Blu-ray for the first time.

Produced by Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer as a complement to Howard's 1995 film Apollo 13, this 12-part miniseries is a docudrama that chronicles the American effort to beat the Soviet Union in a Cold War-era Space Race by, as President John F. Kennedy said in a May 1961 speech, a concerted effort ""to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

Based in part on Andrew Chaikin's non-fiction book A Man on the Moon, the miniseries was originally aired between April 5 and May 10, 1998. Its focus was on Project Apollo, although Part One - Can We Do This? - also covered part of Project Mercury and much of Project Gemini, the NASA programs which served as humanity's stepping stones to the voyage from the Earth to the Moon.

© 1998, 2019 HBO Home Entertainment and Imagine Entertaiment


Starring a stellar cast that includes Cary Elwes, Clint Howard, Tom Hanks, Tim Daly, Mark Rolston, Harve Presnell, David Hugh Kelley, David Andrews, Peter Scolari, and Lane Smith, From the Earth to the Moon was first released in home media in 1999 in VHS, then in 2000, 2005, and 2016 in DVD; the 2005 DVD set differs from the earlier releases due to an ill-advised decision to alter the aspect ratio to make the image more widescreen-TV friendly.

There's not a lot of information out there about HBO Home Entertainment's upcoming Blu-ray set; the only certain facts I can offer are:


  • It's a three-disc set, with each disc containing four episodes of the miniseries in high-definition
  • It includes a code for the digital download copy for Movies Anywhere
  • It won't present the miniseries in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, but will retain its "adjusted for widescreen" format
I pre-ordered this set a couple of days ago, so expect to see a review of From the Earth to the Moon - the Blu-ray Edition some time after July 16, 2019. 

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