A Champion Movie?

A post on the excellent downthetubes blog reports that Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro has signed on to write and adapt a big screen version of the 1960s British fantasy/action drama The Champions.

The Champions was one of my all time favorite genre shows –

Quote:

It ran for 30 episodes in 1968-69 and centered on the adventures of a trio of secret agents working for a multinational organization Nemesis, whose lives were saved when their plane crashed in the Himalayas and they were rescued by an advanced civilization who also bestowed them with superhuman abilities.

Despite its international flavor the show was entirely shot in England. Stuart Damon, today best known for his role as is best known for 30 years of portraying the character Alan Quartermaine on the US soap opera General Hospital, played series lead Craig Stirling. William Gaunt, whose other fantasy credits include Doctor Who and The Avengers, was Richard Barrett and Alexandra Bastedo played the cool-as-ice female superagent Sharron Macready. (AJP – Bastedo recently had a cameo role in Batman Begins). Anthony Nicholls played their long-suffering and often bemused boss Tremayne.

Originally produced by ITC, who also made The Saint, The Prisoner and other shows, the company’s assets are now owned by Granada International, who optioned the rights to the television series to Universal.

While The Champions has been available on DVD in the UK for a while it has yet to get a US release. Hopefully this news may doing something to resolve that…

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