The Films

Marketing the Moon is a seminal book that helped inspire a new perspective and appreciation of the Apollo lunar program. In so doing, it inspired two films. It was the inspiration for Robert Stone’s three part PBS/American Experience documentary titled Chasing The Moon, which released July 2019 at the time of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, and it inspired screenwriter Rose Gilmore unique, romantic comedy Fly Me To The Moon.

Chasing the Moon reimagines the race to the moon for a new generation, upending much of the conventional mythology surrounding the effort. The series recasts the Space Age as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama. Utilizing a visual feast of previously overlooked and lost archival material — much of which has never before been seen by the public — the film features a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events. Among those included are astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Bill Anders; Sergei Khrushchev, son of the former Soviet premier and a leading Soviet rocket engineer; Poppy Northcutt, a 25-year old “mathematics whiz” who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut.

Marketing the Moon co-authors David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek served as consulting producers on the series, working closely with Robert Stone over nearly five years.

Fly Me to the Moon starring Scarlett Johansson & Channing Tatum is a romantic comedy set in the 1969 race to the moon. Released in July 2024, Johansson plays a marketing strategist planning a fake moon landing video in a NASA warehouse. In a USA Today article Is 'Fly Me to the Moon' based on a true story? What's behind fake moon landing movie, screenwriter Rose Gilroy was quoted as saying she looked to Marketing the Moon for inspiration in detailing how NASA made the moon landings enticing to the masses through product placement, magazine articles and TV specials. “It’s about the original ads that were used, and how sci-fi was woven into the minds of the American people” using genre books and movies, Gilroy says. “That was instrumental. It was endlessly interesting to learn all the ways they sold” the Apollo 11 mission.