Preview of the Thunderbirds

Scooper 'outonthetiles' tells us that the UK got a first look at Universal Pictures' big screen adaptation of the Thunderbirds, from director Jonathan Frakes and starring Bill Paxton, Ben Kingsley, Brady Corbet, Anthony Edwards and Sophia Myles.

Here in Britain today there is a BBC programme called Breakfast, which just showed an exclusive preview on the new Thunderbirds movie.

A reporter was in the offices where the CG was being done, which takes up 3 stories of the producers building.

The main feature in the preview was an exclusive clip of Thunderbird 3 launching from the new-look Tracey Island. Instead of coming out of the swimming pool, there was a large space-age looking structure which was like a huge ring being supported by long legs.....hope you get the idea. Anyway this stucture slowly 'opened up' to reveal Thunderbird 3 rocketing out, blasting into the sky giving a cool view of Tracey Island - the CG here was really mindblowing, I'd say this clip will appear in trailers. This 15 second clip took 6 months to make.

The rest of the feature was the reporter speaking to one of the chief programmers, and they discussed how the CG effects were made (eg the reflections on the clip shown were hand painted), and also how it was another hollywood blockbuster using british special effects, and how the film will re-establish britian's great special FX reputation.

Very cool to hear. The movie is set to launch next summer.