EXCLUSIVE: UK producers Anderson Entertainment and Space Age Films are partnering on Merry Christmas, Earthlings!, a feature animation based on an original story by the late Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson.
The project will be pitched at the Berlin Film Festival and European Film Market’s Berlin Animation Days (February 12-14), as part of a spotlight on UK animation.
Written by Anderson in 2006, Merry Christmas, Earthlings! centres on a friendship between a boy and an alien, united on a quest to discover whether Father Christmas is real. Gerry Anderson, who also created shows including Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons, died in 2012 aged 83.
The project is at financing stage; a cast list is being drawn up with a view to announcing at Cannes this year.
The film will be produced by Robert Chandler for Space Age Films, with Anderson Entertainment, which handles Gerry Anderson properties.
Anderson Entertainment and Space Age Films have brought on Keiron Self and Giles New to adapt the story to a screenplay. It is being made for a theatrical release, with a target release window of Christmas 2028.
“My father wrote this story at a moment when he was thinking a lot about family, belief, and what we pass on to the next generation,” said Jamie Anderson, managing director of Anderson Entertainment. “For Anderson Entertainment, this needed to be approached as a contemporary animated film with real emotional weight rather than as a heritage project. Space Age Films, and Robert specifically, understood both sides of that challenge.”
Chandler’s recent credits include 2023’s The Canterville Ghost and 2022’s The Amazing Maurice, both UK independent animations.
Citing Gerry Anderson’s works including Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Stingray, Chandler described him as “our Walt Disney and Irwin Allen rolled into one” and praising “the power of Gerry Anderson’s vision—his creativity and fearless storytelling in making shows that were high-stakes and exciting, carried big philosophical ideas, and were far ahead of their time.”
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