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Tom Hiddleston’s New Apple TV Biopic Officially Gets Breathtaking First Look [Exclusive]

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History is full of remarkable duos that, through their partnerships, ingenuity, and perseverance, changed the course of the world or accomplished the seemingly impossible. From the Wright Brothers, who famously broke ground in the art of aviation through their creation of the first successful airplane, to Marie and Pierre Curie, who discovered the elements radium and polonium and earned Nobel Prizes for their research into radioactivity, these pairs pushed each other to greater heights and carved a spot for themselves in the annals of time in the process. Even in creative pursuits, the greatest partners are often immortalized, like John Lennon and Paul McCarthy or Simon & Garfunkel. However, one particular pair of groundbreakers has often been misrepresented.

In 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first two human beings to reach the summit of Mount Everest as part of a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt. It was the culmination of years of attempts to conquer the highest mountain above sea level on Earth and the result of seven weeks of grueling climbing by the entire team. Yet, while the two men shared the moment, Hillary got most of the credit in the end for doing something Norgay had nearly done six times before finally accomplishing his dream. Apple TV‘s new biopic Tenzing now aims to set the record straight with a cinematically breathtaking and emotional recreation of Norgay’s journey from wide-eyed kid to Sherpa climbing guide and, ultimately, one of the most accomplished mountaineers on the planet alongside Hillary.

As part of Collider’s Exclusive Fall Preview series, we’re thrilled to share a new image from Tenzing that highlights the friendship between its main duo. Tibetan actor Genden Phuntsok plays the titular Norgay opposite Emmy nominee and MCU star Tom Hiddleston as Hillary, and they’re shown smiling at each other in a way that reflects their deep respect while climbing Everest. The two found common ground as outsiders among the British expedition, with the Nepalese-Indian Sherpa having to fight for a spot as a full climber on Hunt’s team and Hillary facing discrimination as a New Zealander. They saw in each other not just remarkable mountaineering skills that rivaled or surpassed anyone on the team, but trust that would prove valuable on a dangerous climb and a relatable drive born from Norgay’s dream to meet the mountain his people revere as Chomolungma and find emotional closure and Hillary’s desire to complete what his heroes never could.

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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

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🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





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02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





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03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





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04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





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05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





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06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





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07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





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09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





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10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





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The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

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Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

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Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

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Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

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No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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‘Tenzing’ Takes an Emotional Approach to the Ascent of Mount Everest

While most of Tenzing unfolds over the course of the journey up Everest, it also flashes between Norgay’s childhood, where he became interested in climbing and came to appreciate “Chomolungma” as the mother goddess, and his early adult years as he met, fell in love with, and built a life with his wife, Dawa (Thinley Lhamo), who encouraged his pursuit of reaching the mountain’s peak until her untimely death. Those memories add emotional weight to an ascent already defined by competing ambitions and tensions between classes, backgrounds, and cultures. Tenzing and the Sherpas he helps assemble find themselves at odds with the other expeditioners who see the mountain as something to be conquered rather than respected and are driven by a national pride to ensure that a Briton is the first to stand at the summit. When push comes to shove and the final “assault” begins, though, aspirations melt away, and respect is forged between two climbers who feel called to the top of the mountain.

Phuntsok, Hiddleston, and Lhamo are only part of the biopic’s star power. Willem Dafoe also appears as Colonel Hunt alongside Outlander‘s Caitríona Balfe as Jill Henderson, the expedition secretary who fought for Norgay’s spot on the British climbing team. In a reunion with his Shambhala co-star Lhamo, Tenzin Dalha also stars as a younger Norgay. Documentary director Jennifer Peedom helmed the film, letting her work with Dafoe on-screen after previously tapping him as the narrator on her other projects like River and Mountain. She also helped develop the story with screenwriter Luke Davies, who previously co-wrote Garth Davis‘ 2016 biopic Lion.

Tenzing premieres in select theaters on October 9 before streaming globally on Apple TV starting October 16. Check out our exclusive image above.

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Director

Jennifer Peedom

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Writers

Luke Davies

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Producers

Emile Sherman, Liz Watts, Iain Canning

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