UFO Movie

Hi Everyone

Charles Bender, the producer of Solaris (2002), has
his eye on a remake of the 1970s Anderson live-action
series UFO ...

This doesn't neccesarily mean that Bender is going to
make a UFO movie ... being an actor myself, and
knowing a little about the business, I would hazard a
guess that Bender may try and option the rights to
make UFO into a movie.

The reason? Bender and other Hollywood film producers
will no doubt be interested in seeing how the
Thunderbirds movie does at the box office in 2004. If
the movie is successful, then Bender will probably
have bought the rights to UFO fairly cheaply and will
possibly be able to get financing to do a UFO movie
because of Thunderbirds' success. If Thunderbirds
flops, then Bender hasn't crippled himself developing
a UFO movie, he may sell the rights and look at making
other movies.

Expect to see other producers & studios optioning the
rights to other Anderson shows in the coming months
... if Thunderbirds is the next big thing, Universal's
competitors will be keen to cash in on it's success by
making movies of, for example, UFO. Notice how other
studios brought out their own Marvel Superheroes
movies after the success of X Men - they waited to see
if X Men would be successful and when it was they made
their own movies like Spider-Man, Daredevil and The
Hulk.

Also on the subject of a UFO movie, don't expect to
see a film that carries on from the original series or
features the original cast a la Star Trek. Yes, Ed
Bishop IS Ed Straker but unfortunately Ed's name isn't
well known enough to open a movie worldwide. If I was
casting Ed in a UFO movie, I would cast him as General
Henderson, I think it would make for quite an ironic
cameo. I also think Mike Billington would be great as
Bill Kofax, the guy who fires Foster from Ventura in
'Exposed'.

Unfortunately, I think the original UFO cast would now
be too old to play their original roles, many of them
have sadly died, many of them have faded into
obscurity and no longer act and many of them wouldn't
be easily recognisable as their original characters. A
UFO movie made just for the fans would be a disaster
... a successful UFO movie needs to appeal to it's
fans but also to attract a new audience so that it can
be commercially successful at the box office. It also
needs to be recognisable as UFO but it also needs to
be a little bit different too.

If I was making a UFO movie, I would tell the story
from the beginning and I would use the very best bits
of 'Identified' and 'Exposed'. I wouldn't feature
Peter Carlin - what was the point of introducing him
as a main character in 'Identified' and then doing
nothing with him? Yes, I know that Peter Gordeno was
advised by his agent only to do so many episodes, but
really that's something that should've been sorted out
before the series was made ... look at other early
episodes, in which Freeman & Bradley were hinted at
being the main character. If you made a film of UFO
and introduced the Carlin character and then dropped
him, the audience would lose interest in the film. I
would have Foster as one of the main characters, I
would also have Carlin as his co-pilot in the XV-104.
When Carlin dies, his sister Leila turns up & asks
Foster lots of questions a la Janna Wade. In the
pre-credits sequence of my UFO movie, I would have
Leila Carlin taking photos of the UFO in the woods
like in 'Exposed' and end the scene with her screaming
as the Alien approaches her. Before the XV-104 flight,
Carlin, looking at a photo of Leila, tells Foster that
she's been missing presumed dead for 10 years. So when
she turns up at Foster's appartment, the audience is
thinking "She's supposed to be dead! What if the
Aliens have taken her over?" whereas Foster is
oblivious to the danger he might be in - this would
create suspense!

Actually, Leila, like Janna Wade, is the Head of
Project Foster, the SHADO operation put into action
when Foster starts snooping around SHADO - but is she?
Later in the movie, she is injured when an Alien is
captured and, comparing her DNA with the Alien's,
Jackson discovers that they are one and the same!
Thus, we have our central villain or villainess, many
UFO episodes featured human beings that were taken
over by the Aliens so this would continue to uphold
that tradition.

The problem with doing a UFO movie that tells the
story from the beginning is that sometimes those sort
of movies don't work, for example, Lost In Space or
The Avengers, in that they're telling a story that
people know already and sometimes it's not as good as
what it was or how they remember it. If it's done
really well, like Star Wars, Superman, or X Men, then
the second film is always better because the
'Universe' has been established in the first.

Finally, I would like to see a UFO movie that captures
the look and production design of the original as it
was very distinctive. I would also like to see a lot
of model-based sfx as the original sfx still stands up
really well. I found Lost In Space disappointing
because they made it look like a faceless copy of
something like Event Horizon. If anything, Mars
Attacks! and The Fifth Element have more of a look
inspired by UFO.

I'm sure I may have stirred up a hornet's nest with
some of my comments but I'm interested in knowing what
other UFO fans think of my comments!

Neil

P.S

The signs are good ... I spoke to someone on Friday
who saw the Thunderbird 2 Hangar under construction at
Pinewood, with all the various pods that go in TB2 on
show, and he says it looks fantastic!

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