Anderson Entertainment Ltd. is an entertainment production and publishing company, currently led by managing director Jamie Anderson and his mother Mary Anderson.
Founded in early March 1999 as The Dog Inn (Ludham) Limited, the company appeared to start out providing music and other entertainment to restaurants and night clubs. Only weeks later in mid-March, Mary and Gerry Anderson were appointed as directors and the company was renamed Anderson Entertainment Limited. Also appointed at the same time was television producer John Needham. Needham and Anderson collaborated on Storm Force in 2001, an idea that would be sold to a Japanese production company as Firestorm, and eventually emerged as an anime series in 2003. Needham would leave the company at the beginning of that year.
While having earlier experimented with remaking Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons in CGI by the means of a test film produced around the turn of the century, it would not be until Anderson Entertainment was approached by Granada that it got off the ground as New Captain Scarlet. The series, which pioneered the use of motion-capture technology, went to air in 2005, and lasted for 26 episodes.
Following New Captain Scarlet, Anderson expressed interest in giving the same treatment to Thunderbirds, although formal permission from rights-holders ITV (then Carlton/Granada) never materialised. While not much is known about what the reboot would have contained, it is known that there were plans to turn at least two of the Tracy brothers into Tracy sisters. ITV's refusal to grant the rights was probably due to the studio having their own version in the works (see Thunderbirds: IR), which would eventually emerge as Thunderbirds Are Go! in 2015.
Following Gerry Anderson's death in 2012, his son Jamie Anderson took over as director in March 2013. His initial aim for the company was to develop "legacy projects", namely uncompleted projects from the senior Anderson's back-catalogue. This included Gemini Force One, a trilogy of novels, and reworking Firestorm as a puppet series.
Anderson Entertainment received thanks on 2015's Thunderbirds: The Vault for the provision of additional images.
The company started the weekly Gerry Anderson Podcast in 2019, which is hosted by Anderson, actor/writer Richard James and researcher Chris Dale. Its two notable features are interviews and the 'Randomiser', in which a random episode from the Gerry Anderson back-catalogue is watched and commented on.
In 2019, the company ramped up their digital offerings, starting A21 and Century 21 Tech Talk. A21 is a weekly short story published on their official website that channels the cover stories that appeared in TV Century 21 between 1965 and 1969. Century 21 Tech Talk is a web-series that explores the technical specifications of various craft that had appeared in shows Gerry Anderson had previously worked on. Also announced was the intention to reboot Terrahawks, a previous Anderson-involved series from the 1980s. In 2020, two 'motion comics' followed, Thunderbirds Legends and Planet of Bones, which were adaptations of original comic stories, digitally animated using the original artwork.
From 2021, a new deal with ITV Studios saw the company move into publishing, which would include audio-book adaptations of pre-existing material. The first release would be Terror from the Stars, an adaptation of John Theydon's first Thunderbirds novel - a series of adaptations would follow, as well as two Stingray adaptations. In 2022, the series branched out into adapting comic books with the release of Thunderbirds Versus the Hood.
Productions[]
Tele-visual[]
- New Captain Scarlet (TV series, 2005)
- Firestorm reboot (upcoming TV series, announced 2014)
- A Christmas Miracle / Merry Christmas Earthlings (upcoming feature film, announced 2015)
- Terrahawks reboot (upcoming TV series, exact title TBC, announced 2019)
- Century 21 Tech Talk (web series, 2019 - 2021)
- Motion comics adapting various series (digital video, intermittently from 2020)
Audio[]
- First Action Bureau (audio drama, 2020 -)
- Stingray adaptations (audiobooks, 2021 - 2022)
- Thunderbirds adaptations (audio books/drama, 2021 - )
- TV Century 21 audio annual (audiobook, 2022)
Print[]
- Gemini Force One (fiction series, 2015 - 2016)
- Space Precinct Reloaded (comic book, 2018)
- A21 (web short stories, 2019 -)
- Five Star Five (fiction series, 2021 - 2023)
- Technical Operations Manual (reference book series, 2021 -)
- Comic anthology releases (2021 onwards, including Fireball XL5 60th Anniversary Comic Anthology)
- New Captain Scarlet: Operation Sabre (graphic novel, 2022)
- Intergalactic Rescue 4 (fiction series, 2022)