The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks

December 6th, 2023 sees the opening of an exciting Apollo Remastered collaboration with Tom Hanks, Christopher Riley and 59 Productions at London’s Lightroom. Along with a musical score by Anne Nikitin, there may be no better way to experience the Apollo Remastered imagery than in this epic immersive experience, at one of the world’s finest such venues.

Hanks, a huge Apollo enthusiast, played Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, produced the HBO miniseries ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ and co-wrote the IMAX film ‘Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D’, but he believes this collaboration has produced, "the most visceral and enthralling story to date of humanity’s journeys beyond our Earth."

Photo - Justin Sutcliffe

In The Press

The Moonwalkers will combine original NASA footage with images from the bestselling photography book “Apollo Remastered”, in which restorer Andy Saunders (who is a consultant producer on the project) remastered original film from the Apollo missions.

It will take place at London’s Lightroom in King’s Cross – the Haworth Tompkins-designed space that is fast becoming the capital’s home of huge artist-led shows – the space launched in January with David Hockney: Bigger and Closer (not smaller & further away).

The Evening Standard

Staggeringly beautiful, spine-tingling stuff. An hour-long immersive experience in which the Hollywood star narrates the epic story begins as a standard movie but quickly begins to cover all four walls of the giant space, with the floor on which the audience sits frequently becoming the lunar surface.

The exquisite photos, recently remastered, bring the Moon to life. They all come from Andy Saunders' incredible book “Apollo Remastered”. It's all spine-tingling stuff.

Forbes

See this exciting “Apollo Remastered” collaboration with Tom Hanks, Christopher Riley and 59 Productions. With a musical score by Anne Nikitin, Lightroom’s powerful projection and audio technology will transport you to another world. It’s a spectacle to take your breath away. 

Hanks is as good as you’d hope, but really “The Moonwalkers” is all about experiencing the archive footage and photos on a colossal scale. The bit in which the entire room is given over to a high-definition photo of the lunar landscape with a view of the Earth is incredibly moving - millions of words have already been expended explaining why, but experiencing it at something like realistic scale and perspective rams home every truism about looking at our lonely, fragile blue orb.

Time Out London

Gobsmackingly huge photo images of the Moon’s surface and our own planet Earth are flashed up around the walls, all with the cathedral vastness and crystal clarity that they have probably always deserved but never before got. It’s quite a spectacle.

The Guardian

Eschewing CGI technology, these images have been cleaned up and enlarged to galactic proportions. We’re surrounded and engulfed on four sides by mountainous lunar regolith - it’s cosmic. The show is the very definition of immersive. At its best this is stunning. Occasionally it’s out of this world.

The Telegraph

Astounding imagery. You won’t believe it, but none of the imagery is CGI. The original Hasselblad photographs have been defrosted from cold storage and scanned using modern technology with results that are simply mind blowingly crisp and detailed.

London Art Roundup

A thrilling presentation of the 1969 space mission at London’s Lightroom. You can see the photographs the astronauts took wrapped around two walls. My spine started tingling, and it did not stop for the rest of the 50-minute film.

The Times 


Once you land on the Moon itself, you’ll almost feel as if you were really there. The music soars. The visuals are extraordinary. You WILL get goosebumps.

The Nudge

What do you get when you combine the production house that converted the Washington Monument into a Saturn V rocket, the recently reworked imagery of "Apollo Remastered" and the actor who made "Houston, we have a problem" a household phrase? An immersive, nearly hour-long experience offering a unique new perspective on humanity's past and future voyages to the moon.

Between the clarity of Saunders' images and the scale of Lightroom's projections, "The Moonwalkers" promises to not only re-introduce visitors to the wonders of the moon, but transport them virtually to the lunar surface. Or, as Hanks described it, produce "the most visceral and enthralling story to date of humanity's journeys beyond our Earth."

Robert Pearlman, Space.com

An Apollo Remastered image, full scale in Lightroom.

Tom Hanks & Chris Riley discuss why the Apollo Remastered imagery and The Moonwalkers immersive show were a perfect match.

The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks, Full Trailer