Stand back, Elon Musk and Richard Branson and that guy from Shift4: Russia has firmed up its plans to make the first real movie shot in space. On Oct. 5, Russian stage and screen star Yulia Peresild and her director Klim Shipenko, who made Russia’s biggest-grossing film, will ride a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station to start filming “The Challenge.”

A collaboration between the space agency Roscosmos, public broadcaster Channel One and a major Russian studio, the film will tell the story of a doctor who must...

Stand back, Elon Musk and Richard Branson and that guy from Shift4: Russia has firmed up its plans to make the first real movie shot in space. On Oct. 5, Russian stage and screen star Yulia Peresild and her director Klim Shipenko, who made Russia’s biggest-grossing film, will ride a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station to start filming “The Challenge.”

A collaboration between the space agency Roscosmos, public broadcaster Channel One and a major Russian studio, the film will tell the story of a doctor who must save the life of a dying cosmonaut. (Cosmonauts on the station will play bit parts.) If the 12-day shoot goes well, Russia will win its first space race in decades: NASA, Mr. Musk and Tom Cruise have been planning an American action movie to film on the space station. That project hasn’t yet gotten off the ground.

Purists may scoff at the notion of Russians doing anything innovative in the world of cinema. But since movies took the world by storm a century ago, Russians have made a number of excellent films. Eight, by last count. Now, by shooting a mass-market film in space, they are throwing the gauntlet down for daring filmmakers from other countries to do the same.

Surely we can all look forward to a French film—call it “Etoiles, Elise, Ennui”—in which a bunch of dying cosmonauts sit around a table smoking cigarettes, drinking Pernod and discussing the meaning of life. And from India, a Bollywood musical about a super-fabulous marriage celebration held on Saturn—“The Wedding Planet.”

“How about ‘Dentist Zhivago,’ in which an oral surgeon travels to Mars to repair the damaged teeth of the lost love of his life.”

What few people know is that “The Challenge” was not the original title for the Russian film. Other names under serious consideration were “Dr. Nyet,” “From Russia with Lift,” and “Climb and Punishment.” What’s more, it wasn’t the only screenplay in contention. Apparently, no fewer than two dozen were passed over and can be revealed here. They include:

“Dentist Zhivago”: An oral surgeon learns that the love of his life, a dental technician he has not seen in 30 years, is living in a retirement home on Mars and desperately needs an implant. He travels across the solar system to replace the ruined tooth. He also repairs two cracked crowns. The two live happily ever after, at least until they find out that the insurance company will not cover the cost of the procedure because it is out of network.

“And Quiet Flees the Don”: A mob chieftain is offered a slot in the witness protection plan if he rats out his henchmen. The FBI finds him the best hiding place ever, disguised as a taciturn Sicilian astronaut aboard a Russian space station thousands of miles from North Jersey. An alternate title: “War and Pizza.”

“Lenin and McCartney in Deep Space”: A buddy film featuring a Russian cop and his Irish sidekick, who travel to the space station to solve a series of bizarre murders involving poisoned borscht. The Irishman cracks the case after discovering that Russian borscht, as opposed to the Ukranian version, does not contain potatoes. So the guy from Kyiv did it.

“The Cherry Orbit.” After the Soviet-era dilithium crystals on their spaceship fail, three long-feuding sisters are trapped in the heavens for all eternity, moaning and groaning about how they’re never going to get to Moscow at this rate. Alternate titles: “The Flying Kareninas” and “The Three Steppe Sisters.”

“V Is for Vodka”: Freedom fighters seeking to topple corrupt authoritarian governments persuade every Russian cosmonaut to wear a Guy Fawkes mask in space. The cosmonauts agree, and the corrupt authoritarian governments see the error of their ways and promise to do better. Then everybody goes out and gets royally drunk.

There was also talk about a comedy lionizing a bunch of over-the-hill cosmonauts who refuse to go quietly. But it too closely resembled “Space Cowboys,” the 2000 Clint Eastwood-Tommy Lee Jones vehicle, so “The Song of the Volga Spacemen” never attained liftoff.