The first draft of AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire was centered on astronauts, not computer programmers

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For four seasons AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire gave viewers an interesting look at the ‘80s tech revolution, chronicling the lives of computer programmers and engineers. However, the show was almost about an entirely different topic.

“We were looking for a people under pressure story,” co-creator and co-showrunner Christopher C. Rogers recalls during a panel at the 2024 ATX TV Festival. “We were looking for a people under pressure story. Something in the Mad Men vein. I think we were dying to get staffed as baby writers on Mad Men. I think we even wrote this on a whiteboard, and it was like, ‘Astronauts,’ with a question mark.”

However, they quickly found inspiration by looking at co-creator and co-showrunner Christopher Cantwell’s background.

“We happened on this thing of Chris’s dad in Dallas in the 1980s working in computer sales. There’s a scene in the pilot that is kind of ripped from Chris’s dad’s life directly. And so, we did some more research into that world and found out this story about the reverse engineering of the IBM PC and kind of retrofitted our desire to tell a kind of workplace drama with some stakes and some Glengarry Glen Ross energy onto this world,” Rogers continues.

“I think we’re so glad we did, because it was this moment where I think we were interested in the stories of how tech came to be tech. Steve Jobs passed away within a month of us going in to pitch this. But that personal connection that Chris brought from his father’s experience I think kind of separated us from the people who were maybe chasing a trendy topic.”

“What if we were here and we were doing the 10 year anniversary of Halt and Catch Astronauts,” Cantwell jokes.

 “By the way, Kerry Bishe could be an astronaut. We’ve just discussed this. She has the skills. She has the vision. The precision,” producer Melissa Bernstein adds.

AMC, if you’re in the market for a show about astronauts, here’s a good pitch from some producers that have given you success in the past. Think about it.

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