Neon Nabs CNN Films' 'Apollo 11' Documentary

The worldwide rights deal follows Neon and CNN jointly releasing the Sundance doc 'Three Identical Strangers,' now being adapted into a feature film.

Neon has acquired the worldwide rights to Todd Douglas Miller’s event documentary Apollo 11 on the 49th anniversary of the NASA spaceship's successful moon landing.

Executive producer CNN Films will retain the U.S. TV rights to Apollo 11, which features never-before-seen film footage of NASA’s historic mission to land a man on the moon. The film is produced by Miller’s Statement Pictures and is currently in postproduction.

Miller directed the Emmy award-winning documentary Dinosaur 13, which was also executive produced by CNN Films. And Neon and CNN Films shared distribution of the Sundance documentary Three Identical Strangers, a feature about triplets separated at birth and then reunited as adults now set to be adapted into a feature film by Film4, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Raw Partners.

The Apollo 11 moon-landing mission is also the backdrop for Damien Chazelle's La La Land follow-up, First Man, which stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, and The Crown's Claire Foy as his wife, Janet.

Chazelle's space drama will open this year's Venice Film Festival. The deal for Miller's Apollo 11 doc was negotiated by Josh Braun of Submarine; Stacey Wolf, vp business affairs at CNN; and Evan Krauss of Gray Krauss Sandler Des Rochers LLP, along with Matt Burke and Ben Braun of Submarine.