UFO to Reboot in 2011!

I'm late with this news, but it seems that a lot of effort is taking place to do a major motion picture of the 1969 sci-fi British tv program UFO by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.

This amazing team created many famous tv programs known as Supermarionation such as Fireball XL-5, Stringray, Captain Scarlet, etc. (mostally they were puppet-based, but UFO was the first Live action program that they came up with). UFO ran for 26 episodes. That was followed by the more famous Space: 1999 that ran for two seasons.

UFO is NOT for children. IT a a dark and sometimes frightening view of the then future 1980s (my god, that was 30 years ago now!). The basic premise of the program was that invading aliens are bent on kidnapping humans for body parts and taking Earth's natural resources back to their own dying world.

Earth is protected by the secret organization known as SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization). Its commander is one Commander Edward Straker. SHADO has a fully equipped moonbase with fighter interceptors, here on Earth, a fleet of submarines that can seperate into two parts - one remains submerged and the other is a flying interceptor. Finally, if a UFO manages to reach the surface, there are land-based APCs known as Mobiles to try and capture or destroy the invaders.

Plus the main characters were quite human - never quite living up 100% of the time as heroic. They had to wrestle with morality and ethics all the time. Commander Straker's personal sacrifices were some of the most moving of the series.

The ladies of the moonbase wore sexy silver suits with purple wigs for some reason. Why the guys didn't purple wigs - well, you have to guess. They had to wear the Nehru-style suits. But - there is always the lovely Lt. Gay Ellis!

Fans of the show would not let it die. When the internet came around, websites such as ufoseries.com and others kept the show alive for those who thought to look it up.

Now, it is the 21st century. And one Matthew Gratzner(director) seems to have picked up the baton to make UFO into a movie. So far, actors Joshua Jackson and Ali Larter have been picked to play Paul Foster and Virginia Lake respectively. There is even talk so far that this could turn into a trilogy of films. Scriptwriting duties by Ryan Gaudet and Joseph Kanarek have been taksed to revamp and update the concept. But they are keeping in mind the original tv fans of the show and is expected to do a better job than what JJ Abrams did with the latest telling of the Star Trek francise.

Principal photography is to begin in 2010 with a release n 2011.

The movie poster is pretty faithful to what the original moonbase interceptors looked like. In this poster version, there does appear to be a slight difference in the front missile. It may very well be a missile pod instead of the entire front end being just a nuclear tip missile.

As for sci-fi and adventure/spy films in general, this appears to be a very god year. Spacecruiser Yamato wil be a live action picture. Matt Helm will be coming back to the big screen and now this. I am a very happy camper now!

UPDATE: Found some additional websites including this one that has some concept artwork for this movie (http://www.cinemaspy.com/article.php?id=2584).

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Ref. (http://www.fanderson.org.uk/ufomovie/breakingnews.html).

(http://www.denofgeek.com/television/392179/looking_forward_to_the_ufo_reboot.html).

Matthew Gratzner interview (http://forbiddenplanet.com/pages/matthew-gratzner-new-ufo-trilogy/).