Today I met up with Mike Tucker and he still doesn’t think I’m crazy, which is very reassuring. The Model Unit have a workshop at Ealing Film Studios; today it was full of Viking longboats and other Celtic miscellany which they are building for a children’s TV show.
Mike led me into the office area, which is dominated by a Dalek. (And let’s face it, how many rooms could you put a Dalek in and not have it dominate?) Red Dwarf artefacts adorned the tops of bookshelves – a large-scale Starbug model, the Emohawk from Polymorph II. After looking at the company’s impressive showreels and portfolio, I showed Mike the concept art which Ian Tomlinson and David Ayling have been producing for the last year. Mike had already seen some of the key images and had read the script, and was extremely enthusiastic about the whole thing. He was particularly pleased to hear that I wanted to completely exclude CGI from the movie, unlike most producers these days, who want precisely the opposite.
A couple of other modelmakers paused in their Celtic constructions to peruse the concept art, and were equally excited about it.
So Mike and his team are on board the good ship Shadowland. They can’t wait for me to get the film financed so they can start work on it.