Is it me or are all the Anderson show remakes getting a little scary? We have the just-get-it-over-with Thunderbirds movie, a tentative Stingray TV movie, a potentially interesting new Captain Scarlet show and now a movie based on Joe 90 from Disney! TV21 was sent a link to a brief and somewhat odd (what is a "Skein"?) article about the show as featured in the US film industry paper Variety. (thanks to Silvertip)

Disney will pull strings for spy sprig Original show ran in U.K. during Cold War

Claude Brodesser

HOLLYWOOD -- Disney is readying a nine-year-old boy as the world's newest secret agent, fast-tracking "Joe 90" -- a live action feature film based on husband-and-wife team Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's cult British TV puppet skein.

Don Murphy, whose Angryfilms banner just produced Sean Connery-starrer "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" at 20th Century Fox, is pairing with U.K. producer Susan Montford to make the pic. Rights were acquired from British broadcaster Carlton TV, and the project is going to screenwriters imminently.

Skein ran at the zenith of the Cold War, from Sept. 1968 through March 1969. It followed the adventures of a boy agent for the World Intelligence Network -- an organization which, reflective of the era's nuclear brinksmanship, maintained the balance of power in the world by any means necessary.

Original "Joe 90" was penned by Anderson, who also produced and co-wrote the 1965-1966 puppet skein "Thunderbirds" and the features "Thunderbirds are Go" (1966) and "Thunderbird Six" (1968). A remake of "Thunderbirds" is now lensing as a feature at Universal Pictures under the helm of Jonathan Frakes ("Clockstoppers").

Thanks to an electronic device that looks like a pair of eyeglasses, Joe 90 can transfer the brain patterns of the greatest experts in the world to help him accomplish almost anything to finish his missions. He can become the world's greatest pilot (he steals a Soviet 242 MiG in the first episode), a champion auto racer, a peerless surgeon or whatever else is necessary. Joe is above suspicion because he still looks what he really is -- a schoolboy.

Buena Vista Motion Picture Group VP Brad Epstein brought the project into the studio, and will oversee its progress to production under prexy Nina Jacobson.

Full article can be seen here