When Gerry Anderson died in 2013 I assumed that also meant that not only would there be no more series like “UFO,” “Space: 1999″ or “Space Precinct” but without his leadership there wouldn’t even be an Anderson Entertainment.
It seems that I am wrong because the company’s web site not only went live recently and hints that there are not only future projects in the pipeline, but that one of those projects will be revealed very soon.
What’s also interesting is that, while the Anderson Entertainment website is run by his son, Jamie, I have no idea who’s currently running the company itself.
The point is that whomever is behind the company will hopefully have the clout (and financial backing, because Anderson’s past series aren’t known for being inexpensive) to continue Anderson’s history of innovation.
And speaking of which, what are they producing? Will this upcoming project be a new series based upon their existing catalog? An entirely new series? Movies?
The possibilities are almost endless, and while the following trailers – which are homages to past Anderson productions – don’t answer any of those questions, they are pretty cool in their own right.
“Space Precinct,” arguably one of Gerry Anderson’s more controversial series, mainly due to the $1.5 million per episode cost, which made it the most expensive show in Britain at the time. Yet, despite all the money spent, the ratings were only average, which I suspect had more than a little to do with the terrible time slots the show was stuck in, as opposed to the series itself.
I witnessed this personally. It was one of my favorite shows growing up, and I recall trying to force myself to stay up till it aired, which was usually around 12:30 on Friday morning.
Besides the issue of times slots, the show’s greatest problem is that it didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be, which gave it an oddly schizophrenic tone. For instance, an episode would sometimes start off with hardcore scifi, then somehow end as a family drama.
I suspect I know the answer to the question above even before I wrote it, but part of me refuses to believe that a movie based upon Gerry Anderson’s “UFO” is probably not going to happen. Sure, there’s been no news for almost a year now–the site has been live for a bit over two–but just because it’s still live says to me that SOMEONE wants to see it (other than me, that is).
Then again, you only know till it actually happens, but I am going to keep an eye out.
On the other hand, I would rather have it not happen at all than for someone to come and treat it in the awful fashion that Jonathan Frakes did with his version of Anderson’s “Thunderbirds.”
Here’s the opening for the original series to whet the appetite.
And if the movie ever comes about, please, please, please let someone with the range of Barry Gray do the music.
For quite a while now I was wondering what was going on with “Space: 2099,” the reboot of Gerry Anderson’s “Space: 1999,” because I haven’t heard any news on that front for four or five months. I was worried that it suffered the fate of the UFO reboot, which appears to be caught somewhere in development hell.
Luckily that appears not to be the case because I just read a recent interview with Jace Hall, who’s spearheading the reboot.
The interview mainly goes into why Hall chose to reboot the series, and while it doesn’t say anything about how the development is going, it also doesn’t seem to imply that there are any problems.
Some may instead call it stealing–which is understandable–but I think that there’s some innovation involved, if you look close enough.
When you’re working with a limited budget, sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. Gerry Anderson’s “Space: 1999″ was at the time, the most expensive series on television, but if you had to work with special effects, model making in particular, you sometimes had to make do with whatever you could throw together.
I mention this because I happened to be watching Luigi Cozzi‘s (credited as ‘Lewis Coates’) Starcrash, which is recycled in more ways than you could possibly imagine
Most of it, thankfully, having little to do with any Gerry Anderson production.
If you look at the image above, which is a screenshot from the film, you’ll see what looks to be the command module from an Eagle, the multi-purpose space craft from “Space: 1999.”
Which looks that way because that’s exactly what it is.
It’t not unusual for model makers in science fiction films to use off-the-shelf parts to build their ships, though they usually do better disguising the fact.
I also happened to notice that the soundtrack was by John Barry (if a production ever seemed to buy legitimacy, then this was it), which if you listen carefully sounds remarkably like his theme to Disney’s “The Black Hole” in places.
In fact, if parts of the “Starcrash” soundtrack replaced that which was used in “The Black Hole,” it would have benefitted, because there’s some beautiful music, most of it more subtle than that used in the Disney film.
I have always assumed that the question of whether or not there would be a reboot of Space: 1999 was more a question of when, than if because, if television or feature films have taught us anything, it’s that updating something that already exists is easier than spending the time, money and effort to actually innovate.
That’s meant to be only partially snarky, because the remake of “Battlestar Galactica” improved significantly upon a series that was little more than a blatant “Star Wars” clone.
Jace Hall’s Space 2099, the version of Gerry Anderson’s original series most likely to reach production, due to the backing by iTV and Hall’s own HDFilms, is actually not in terms of actual development.
That honor would be reserved for Moonbase Alpha’s Legacy, developed by Eric Bernard
Unlike Hall’s Space 2099, there’s video available that illustrates how far Bernard’s version has progressed, and it’s pretty brilliant.
Space: 1999 is being rebooted, if Deadline is accurate. I don’t know if Gerry Anderson will be involved, though I hope that he is. Anyone that has followed my blog knows that I have been following this project, in its various forms, since its inception, and I am glad to hear that there will potentially be a new series.
I like all things “Space: 1999,” which is why when I saw this ship from the “Futurama” movie “Bender’s Game” I had to post it.
That grey spacecraft is an Eagle, the ubiquitous transport craft from the groundbreaking Gerry Anderson series.
The image on the left is the movie poster for the feature-film version of the Gerry Anderson-produced 1970′s science fiction series, UFO. While I like the vagueness, I am not too sure that moviegoers that have never seen the original film will know what’s it’s about.
Though, when you think about it, they don’t have to because all they need to know is what the initials ‘UFO’ stand for.
ITV Reboots Anderson’s “Thunderbirds”
When Gerry Anderson died last September, I not only was saddened, but felt somehow betrayed. I am not arrogant to believe that his health is any of my business, but knowing would have clarified for me why it is that he left the Pinewood Studios lot, and the selling of the memorabilia that he had accrued over the years.
I assumed that it was just because he was no longer as productive as he once was, which, in a roundabout way, was true.
Though the truth was deeper, sadder, than I would have guessed.
The last thing that I was aware he was working on was “Eternity,” with Steve Begg, who also worked with him on “Space Precinct.” Begg, like other special effects people who have cut their teeth on Gerry Anderson productions, eventually went on to bigger things, such as the effects work on “Skyfall,” among others.
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