THE ALIEN STAYS IN THE PICTURE

« And I've seen it before
And I'll see it again
Yes I've seen it before
Just little bits of History repeating »
(Dame Shirley Bassey)

The blog of Lee Goldberg, screenwriter, author, producer, tv historian and expert, teacher, francophile, and God knows what more (is he fluent in Japanese like Christopher Chance?), has a British flavour this week as Lee is in London for a business trip. Maybe they'll ask him to produce something around the Tube strike, who knows... Seriously, this multi-talented man would be perfect for the US Primeval if this American spin-off sees the light.

Anyway, Lee Goldberg mentions us an article of Variety (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118004006.html?categoryid=3628&cs=1&query=ufo+evans) about the announcement by legendary producer Robert Evans that his company is developing with ITV Global Entertainment a movie based on the ITC television series UFO (1970-1973). And Paramount will have a first-look at the project (http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2009/05/interceptors-immediate-launch.html).

Produced by Gerry Anderson, UFO was set in 1980 (!) SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization), a top secret organization, fought an alien race that has been kidnapping and killing humans for decades for their body parts. SHADO headquarters was hidden under the Harlington-Straker movie studio, and the studio boss, Ed Straker, was actually the commander of SHADO.

The series is renowned today for his outrageous so seventies visual style (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDzNkern1Fc&hl=fr) and its overdose of techno-babble but remains a classic, with great special effects, a good cast, and top-notch adult oriented SF scripts. UFO is wrongfully underrated, and even Lee qualifies the show of "cheesy" and "silly". May I respectfully beg to differ, please watch again Identified, A Question of priorities, and Confetti Check A-O.K. UFO is far above Space: 1999, whose first season was all style over substance - not to mention the infamous second season which exploded the notions of "Silly" and "Cheesy" beyond your imagination.

Now with Paramount linked to a movie remake of UFO we can expect "Star Trek meets Transformers". Because J.J. Abrams's Star Trek is a worldwide box office hit, I bet every studio is searching into their catalogues to find something with a bit of outer space in it. Remember what happened to Universal's movie adaptation of Thunderbirds (another classic by Gerry Anderson) but it won't be long before Space 2099 - The Movie, the return of Buck Rogers, or Babylon 5 - The Motion picture. And Germans could make a big budget comedy of Raumpatrouille Orion. Talking about "cheesiness" I want a Star Maidens movie remake and a reboot of Pigs in Space.

And now we can be sure that modern Doctor Who will get his movie treatment as well. Space, the final box office frontier...

http://ufoseries.com/