The forthcoming release of Working Title's live-action Thunderbirds feature film marks the completion of a project that originally began nine years ago when the licensing rights to the Thunderbirds television series were sold, along with those of the entire back catalogue of ITC Entertainment, to the Dutch media conglomerate PolyGram. PolyGram Filmed Entertainment announced that a feature film based on the 1965 Supermarionation series was to be developed by their subsidiary company Working Title Films and a variety of different approaches by which this might be accomplished (including stop-motion animation and computer generated digital animation) were proposed amidst media speculation that the project would be filmed in live-action with the actor brothers Alec, William, Daniel and Stephen Baldwin as the Tracy brothers, Sean Connery as Jeff Tracy and Joanna Lumley as Lady Penelope.

At the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Working Title announced that Peter Hewitt, the British director of Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) and The Borrowers (1997), had been assigned to the film with a budget of $60 million to play with. The English Patient (1996) star Kristin Scott-Thomas (previously seen as a cool secret agent in Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible (1996) feature film) was announced to play Lady Penelope while Pete Postlethwaite - seen in Brassed Off (1996), Amistad (1997) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) - revealed that he had been offered the role of Parker. The producers were also looking at Matt Damon - then fresh from his title role in Good Will Hunting (1997) - to play Alan Tracy, That Thing You Do! (1996) star Steve Zahn as Gordon Tracy, and rubber-faced comedian Rowan Atkinson as Brains.

Hewitt developed a script with American screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick which presented a new, original adventure for the International Rescue team while remaining true to the spirit, format and continuity of Gerry Anderson's television series. In this version of the film, the International Rescue team were targeted by deranged Moonoleum Incorporated director Thaddeus Stone who had constructed an orbiting atmospheric extraction device that would transfer Earth's atmosphere to Stone's colony on the Moon, leaving the Earth barren and lifeless. In order to complete his plans, Stone needed to get his hands on Tracy Island's power core, the only generator powerful enough to fuel his extraction device. With assistance from The Hood, Stone learned the secret location of the International Rescue base, kidnapped Alan Tracy and forced Jeff to hand over the power core, leading to an exciting race against time to save the Earth.

Six months of pre-production work began with the visualisation of the new craft that would be seen in the film - including the Skythrust Mach 5 passenger airliner, the Fireflash VG11 sports car, the Mole drilling vehicle and two versions of Thunderbird 1 - and this was followed by extensive CGI animation development (supervised by Peter Chiang) to create the enormous number of visual effects sequences described in the script. Hewitt's vision for the production design was to remain true to a Sixties 'retro' vision of the future with big, bright, low-tech, colourful machinery, and this was reflected in the designs of Adam Brockbank, Julian Caldo, Temple Clark, Jane Clark, Brendan McCarthy and Joe Nimick III, among others.

Then, over the summer of 1998, the massive success of Michael Bay's Thunderbirds-style blockbuster Armageddon was overshadowed by the devastating failure of two other big budget feature film adaptations of 1960s television series, Lost In Space and The Avengers. PolyGram was sold to Universal Pictures and the studio's executives began to get cold feet about Thunderbirds, questioning whether the climate was right for another 1960s TV-to-movie remake - particularly one that was so little-known in America. Kirkpatrick left the project closely followed by Hewitt and, fearing that the cost of Thunderbirds would vastly exceed the potential returns, work on the film was suspended by Universal prior to its planned principal photography start date of August 1998.

But producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner remained determined that their live-action Thunderbirds feature film would, eventually, be made and by the autumn of 2002, pre-production was underway again at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, in preparation for the start of principal photography in March 2003.


Abandoning the 1997 Kirkpatrick/Hewitt script, Bevan and Fellner commissioned an entirely new script from screenwriter William Osborne, author of The Scorpion King (2002). Re-evaluating the target audience for the film, Bevan and Fellner were prompted by the success of Spy Kids (2001) and Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone (2001) to develop Thunderbirds for a family audience of under-12s and their parents.

Setting the story six years prior to the events of the television series enabled Osborne to place the focus of the film on an adolescent Alan Tracy, presenting a 'rights of passage' story with characters which the producers felt younger cinemagoers could more easily identify with. Osborne's script was subsequently retooled by Michael McCullers, a screenwriter whose previous screenplay credits include Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002).


With a budget set at $70 million, actor Jonathan Frakes - best known for his role as Will Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation - was invited to direct the film on the strength of his previous directing experience on Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). Frakes announced that Thunderbirds would appeal to general audiences as well as hardcore Thunderbirds fans, stating, "We need to honour the look of the series. We've got to make sure the ships resemble very closely the ships from the show."

With this in mind, art director Ray Chan hired original Thunderbirds television series vehicle designer Mike Trim to work on developing some of the new pod vehicle designs for the movie, including the Mole, Firefly and Thunderizer. New versions of Thunderbirds 1, 2, 3 and 5 were designed by concept artist Dominic Lavery, while Thunderbird 4 and the Tracy Island villa exteriors were designed by Mark Holmes.


A new pink FAB 1 car for Lady Penelope was built as a full-size working vehicle. Unfortunately, Working Title were refused permission from Rolls-Royce-BMW to make the car a futuristic Rolls-Royce similar to the one in the television series, on the grounds that such a car's appearance in the film would confuse the company's marketing of their new Rolls-Royce Phantom. Instead, the film-makers turned to Ford who immediately came on board to turn FAB 1 into a fantastical pink version of the Ford Thunderbird, a 23-foot-long six-wheeled limosine that transforms into an aircraft and a speedboat for key sequences in the film.

The Firefly eight-wheeled firefighting truck, the Thunderizer mobile cannon and the Mole drilling vehicle were also built as spectacular full-size working vehicles. The two former vehicles would be used in several action sequences set in the Thunderbird 2 pod silo while the latter would be used extensively in the film's climactic raid on the Bank of London.


Production designer John Beard was responsible for the overall look of the film, creating the interiors of the Tracys' luxurious multi-level island home, the interior rooms and corridors of Thunderbird 5 and the cockpits of the other Thunderbird vehicles. These were designed in a range of primary colours to reflect the distinctive exterior colours of the Thunderbird craft. Beard was previously the art director of Terry Gilliam's Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life (1983) and Brazil, and production designer on Absolute Beginners (1986), Enigma (2001) and K-PAX (2001).

This style is also reflected in the Tracys' jumpsuit-style International Rescue uniforms and the wide variety of other outfits - including Lady Penelope's extensive wardrobe of 15 different costumes. These were created for the film by costume designer Marit Allen whose previous work includes Little Shop Of Horrors (1986), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Ang Lee's Hulk (2003).


Principal photography on Thunderbirds began in early March 2003 on location in The Seychelles (doubling for Tracy Island) before moving to Beard's enormous interior sets at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, on Monday, March 16th. Filming continued throughout April, May and June with further location photography taking place at various sites in and around London: Wellington College at Crowthorne in Berkshire doubled for Alan Tracy's high school, Wharton Academy (est. 1860), Cliveden House near Cookham became Lady Penelope's Creighton-Ward Mansion, the Computer Associates building at Ditton Park, Datchet near Slough was turned into San Francisco City Hospital, and University College London on Gower Street, London WC1 became The Bank of London, while other scenes were filmed at Black Park in Iver Heath, and Parliament Square and Tower Bridge in central London.

Director of photography was the respected cinematographer Brendan Galvin whose previous credits include The Commitments (1991), Far And Away (1992) and Behind Enemy Lines (2001). The results of his labours were edited by Martin Walsh who won the Oscar for Achievement in Film Editing at the 2003 Academy Awards for his work on Chicago (2002). Walsh's previous work included the film editing on The Krays (1990), Hilary And Jackie (1998), Mansfield Park (1999) and Bridget Jones's Diary (2001).


Speaking at a press conference at Pinewood Studios, the film's star Sir Ben Kingsley told reporters, "We're making a film of quality. I think we're dealing very much with the rite of passage of a 14-year-old boy who is damned and blessed with heroic parents, one of whom is dead and one of whom is a world hero. It's pure, mythological, rich stuff."

His co-star Bill Paxton said, "I think this is ultimately going to become this kind of great, quintessential British import to the world. It's going to celebrate the style, the charm, of England in the Sixties, but it isn't an Austin Powers kind of thing. It's more than that. When I grew up in the Sixties, it was about vocation. It wasn't about making money. It was about doing things for other people, finding something you wanted to do. There's a message of integrity and ethics all through this thing. It celebrates technology as benefiting mankind, using these machines to try to actually help people, instead of decimating them."


With principal photography completed at the end of June 2003, an extensive period of post-production work began. Much of the film's post-production has focussed on the huge number of visual effects sequences which have been created by CGI artists and animators at Framestore CFC. The largest visual effects and computer animation company in Europe, Framestore's most recent work has included visual effects for Die Another Day (2002), Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (2002) and Underworld (2003). Visual effects supervisor Mark Nelmes is a highly experienced digital artist and compositor whose previous work has included digital effects sequences for Sleepy Hollow (1999), Mission: Impossible II (2000) and The Mummy Returns (2001).

Further post-production work - primarily on music and sound - took place throughout the spring in order to complete the movie in time for its UK release on July 23rd, 2004 (US release: August 6th, 2004).

Film Story and Cast Information
Cast & Crew Credits and Release Schedule
Official Universal Pictures Thunderbirds Movie website

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