Catherine Laga'aia and Deacon Phillippe to lead Disney+ Spaceship Earth pilot
Catherine Laga'aia and Deacon Phillippe are set to star in Spaceship Earth, a Disney+ pilot inspired by the EPCOT attraction of the same name at Disney World.
The series centres on teenagers from Earth's past and future. They join forces after a mission to avert a global cataclysm goes awry. That logline is all that has been made public about the story so far, as reported by Deadline. No character names have been released.
It remains a pilot, meaning a single test episode made before Disney+ decides on a full series. Disney+ first ordered the pilot in August, as reported by Variety. No series order has followed. That call comes later.
The pilot was written by Jason Fuchs and Michael Waldron. It hails from studio 20th Television. Fuchs will serve as showrunner, meaning the person who leads the series creatively day to day, and will executive produce through his Five Ten Productions banner. Waldron will executive produce alongside pilot director Lee Toland Krieger, Adam Fishbach of Fishbach Productions and Adam Fasullo of Anomaly Pictures.
Laga'aia played the title role opposite Dwayne Johnson in Disney's live-action Moana. The film premiered in theatres on 10 July 2026, according to Disney+, and has grossed over $323 million worldwide. That role made her familiar to Disney audiences around the world. This pilot would keep her at the studio for her next screen job.
She also co-starred in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart on Prime Video. That was a limited series, meaning a show built to tell one complete story in a single season. She is also set to lead Crashout, a thriller from filmmaker Nick Annas. Both jobs show a run of screen leads since Moana.
Phillippe is in production on Better Than the Movies for Netflix. It is a romantic comedy based on the young adult novel by Lynn Painter. He has wrapped his first leading film role in Brother Save Us, an independent drama from writer-director Jesse Behrenwald. He will also appear in 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank, a Miramax film from Frankie Shaw.
What makes this stand out is the starting point. A ride brings a title, a building and a feeling. It brings no script. The writers must invent the people, the dialogue and the rules of time travel from scratch.
For viewers, this means cameras are the next step. A pilot with leads attached normally moves toward filming. Then Disney+ will decide whether Spaceship Earth goes to series or stops there.
