August 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of Anderson Entertainment and its continuing success in celebrating the life, career and legacy of Gerry Anderson, one of the world’s most prolific and successful television producers. Initially established by Anderson himself in 1999, the company had undergone revitalisation since Gerry’s passing in 2013 as the premier destination for celebrating and curating his legacy.
Anderson Entertainment was initially formed between Gerry Anderson and his then business partner John Needham at a time when several of Gerry’s classic Supermarionation productions were enjoying a fresh wave of popularity through primetime TV reruns and releases on video and DVD. Gerry himself was rarely content to linger on past achievements however, and so Anderson Entertainment soldiered on into the new millennium with ambitions to create new television productions. Firestorm and Eternity were two such concepts worked on around this time, as well as other diverse efforts such as the children’s centric Regor the Rescue Dog, the cosmic action of Lightspeed, and a reinvention of Operation Shockwave, a longstanding concept of Gerry’s since the 1970s.
One of Anderson Entertainment’s major productions in these earlier days was 2005’s New Captain Scarlet. Using state-of-the-art computer animation technology and an uncompromisingly faithful reimagining of the core concept of 1967’s Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, New Captain Scarlet proved to be Gerry’s last ever fully realised work.
Gerry Anderson passed away from Alzheimer’s in December 2013, seemingly putting the company’s status to rest. However, in the wake of Gerry’s passing, Anderson Entertainment would receive a revival from his widow, Mary, and his son, Jamie, who runs the company as its Director. Since 2014, Anderson Entertainment continues to push ahead with a renewed mission to celebrate Gerry’s life and career whilst producing new works based on Gerry’s classic properties, as well as creating new and original concepts shaped in the Anderson mould of imaginative excitement and thrilling danger.
Curating the Future
Early efforts saw Terrahawks, Gerry’s 1980s comeback TV series co-produced with Christopher Burr, reborn as a three-volume audio series produced alongside Big Finish and reuniting much of the original cast. A pair of crowdfunding campaigns were also launched for Firestorm and Gemini Force One. Firestorm would now be reimagined using sophisticated puppetry and practical special effects in a process dubbed Ultramarionation, yielding an 8-minute pilot episode showcasing the series’ concept being taken back to its roots of futuristic science fiction and international terrorism. Gemini Force One was envisioned by Gerry prior to his passing as a rescue-disaster series of novels in the style of Thunderbirds. The crowdfunding campaign initially brought the first novel to life, written by M.G. Harris, before the series was picked up by Orion as a three-volume young adult series of adventure novels.
Throughout the last 10 years, Anderson Entertainment has blossomed into becoming the premier destination for fans of Gerry Anderson. We continue to produce a far-reaching array of quality, authentic merchandise based on Gerry’s classic works (clothing, books, model kits, soundtracks, DVD/Blu-ray releases) and done so in close collaboration with ITV, who own the rights to the majority of Gerry’s classic TV series from the 1960s and 1970s. Anderson Entertainment doesn’t forget other avenues of Gerry’s eclectic and long-lasting career, either, with lesser-seen gems such as Terrahawks, Space Precinct, Dick Spanner, The Day After Tomorrow: Into Infinity, New Captain Scarlet, and more also receiving attention over the years. At the centre of our ethos is the continuing mission to nurture and develop Gerry’s classic productions, but also his less well-known works, which other companies may be less interested in doing so.
New Storytelling
Since 2021, Anderson Entertainment has steered its operations to new ambitions by expanding its status as a publisher and audio producer with the ongoing releases of its lineup of Technical Operations Manuals, comic anthologies, novelisations of lost Anderson works, and audio adaptations of classic comic strips and novels. The Technical Operations Manuals offer detailed, authentic in-universe cross-sections of the vehicles and organisations of many classic Anderson series, including UFO, Space: 1999, Fireball XL5, and Joe 90. The comic anthologies bring together fully collected strip runs of classic Anderson comics from the likes of TV Century 21, Countdown/TV Action, Look-in and more, beautifully resorted and accompanied by in-depth essays and interviews.
Other unique publishing avenues we’ve pursued include series guidebooks of some of Gerry’s less obvious works, but which still command loyal audiences – the bookazine The Secrets of the Secret Service and the hardback Flaming Thunderbolts: The Definitive Story of Terrahawks. All of these publications display our authoritative and trusted approach to documenting the in-universe and real-world histories of Gerry’s productions.
The audio adaptations use narrators and full casts to breathe new life into classic and obscure stories from original Anderson spin-off media whilst maintaining that classic authenticity of being genuinely fresh interpretations of their source material. The Thunderbirds audio dramas for for instance have been rapturously received by fans, spearheaded by a regular cast that includes Genevieve Gaunt as Lady Penelope and Jon Culshaw as Jeff Tracy and Parker. Accompanying the audio adaptations are hardback reprints of classic Anderson spin-off novels from the 1960s, many of which have remained out of print since their original publication.
This growing repertoire of stories, faithfully adapted from pre-existing material, have proved a great success with audiences, so much so that Stingray’s 60th anniversary is being celebrated throughout 2024 with the trans-media narrative Stingray: Deadly Uprising. This hugely ambitious multi-platform saga tells a brand-new Stingray story, set in the original world of the classic Supermarionation series, through audio releases, novels, and comics, using the format established by Anderson Entertainment’s current line-up of audio, novel and comic anthology releases.
This focus on telling new stories also spills over into First Action Bureau, an original concept devised by Jamie Anderson and Big Finish’s Nicholas Briggs, who also serves as Anderson Entertainment’s executive producer of audio material. First Action Bureau thrusts a contemporary and deadly spy-fi concept into a classically shaped futuristic world inspired by Gerry Anderson’s works. The First Action Bureau utilised ‘big data’ to prevent crime before it happens, and its top operative, Nero Jones, can always be relied upon to perform the deadliest of operations. However, throughout her adventures, Nero uncovers tangled webs of deception at the heart of the bureau, leading to even greater, mind-bending dangers for her to endure.
With its star cast including Genevieve Gaunt, Sacha Dhawan, Paterson Joseph and Nicola Walker and its diverse approach across audio dramas and novels, First Action Bureau signals a growing commitment from Anderson Entertainment to create genuinely new productions based on original premises.
Online Identity
As well as Anderson Entertainment’s focus on authentic merchandise and multi-platform storytelling, we have a flourishing online presence that keeps Anderfans positively engaged, as well as welcomes new fans into what Anderson Entertainment offers. Through the Official Gerry Anderson name, we maintain social media platforms, livestreams, the Official Gerry Anderson website, and The Gerry Anderson Podcast, all of these platforms deliver fun, engaging, informative material with the shared ethos of uplifting Gerry Anderson’s worlds and publicising all the latest releases from Anderson Entertainment.
Since 2018, The Gerry Anderson Podcast has kept fans entertained with its mixture of news, interviews, watchalong commentary of classic Anderson episodes and more with presenters Jamie Anderson, Richard James, and Chris Dale. Notable guests on the podcast include musician Gary Numan, astronomer Brian Cox, artist Lee Sullivan, the European Space Agency’s Dr. David Parker, and countless creative professionals from the worlds of Gerry Anderson themselves. Since July of 2023, the podcast has shifted to a visual format, now being filmed on a regular basis at the custom-built video podcast studio at Slough’s Moxy Hotel in collaboration with Neal Veglio of Podknows Podcasting.
From quality merchandise releases to newly produced stories for these classic TV series and online platforms that allow fans new and old to discover Gerry’s worlds, the ongoing goal then of Anderson Entertainment is to champion what Gerry Anderson’s legacy is – and what it could be in the future. While we currently remain focused on delivering Stingray: Deadly Uprising, next year brings with it the 60th anniversary of Thunderbirds and 50th anniversary of Space: 1999. Who knows what future adventures for these much-loved characters may hold? If the last 25 years are any indication, for Anderson Entertainment, anything can happen!
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