A Church Hall Throwback

With a budget of nearly $2 million, the original 1956 production of Forbidden Planet was a Hollywood big-budget sci-fi milestone. Although the 2009 Internet leak of a script by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski has delayed nascent remake efforts, a group of enterprising Brits in Hunslet, Yorkshire are in the midst of shooting an homage of their own, for the princely sum of just a few thousand Euros.


On the Shoulders of Giants relies on a similar interplanetary light-years rescue expedition storyline and features sly nods to the original such as a lead protagonist, Commander Jane Altaire (Sara E. Wood), named in honor of the original planet (Altair IV) and Anne Francis daughter character of Altaira. Written and directed by Kenneth D. Barker, all aspects of Commander Altaire's journey to the new planet of Theta-25L aboard spaceship Andromeda are being shot in front of a green screen in an abandoned church hall in Hunslet, with CGI to be filled in later. Barker previously made Kingdom, Rosetta and the 2009 action-adventure DVD release Catalina, about a corporate-lawyer-slash-transvestite-superhero.

[Water on the Rock Ltd.]