Works based on Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds, a British science-fiction puppet television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, has inspired various adaptations, imitations and cultural references, in various forms of media, since its first appearance in 1965.

The series has been recognised for its popularity and endurance, particularly in its country of origin, and is generally regarded as the most successful series devised by the Andersons.

Among other works, Thunderbirds has been followed by two film sequels, a live-action film adaptation and an animated TV remake. It is currently being remade as Thunderbirds Are Go, which combines computer animation and live action and began broadcast on CITV in the UK in 2015.

The popularity of Thunderbirds gave rise to two full-length film sequels with financial backing by United Artists. They premiered on 12 December 1966 and 29 July 1968. Both were written and produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and directed by David Lane, and neither was a critical or commercial success. During the early 1980s, several Thunderbirds episodes were combined to create three compilation TV films, and in 2004, nearly 40 years after the original TV series was first broadcast, a live-action film adaptation was released.

In the early 1980s, episodes from a number of the Andersons' 1960s Supermarionation series were re-edited and combined into made-for-TV compilation films by ITC's New York offices, supervised by producer Robert Mandell and writer David Hirsch. Intended to be broadcast in a two-hour family timeslot (including advertisement breaks), and branded "Super Space Theater", this new format was sold to cable networks and into syndication in United States. Three Thunderbirds compilations, all one-and-a-half hours in length and re-edited with new, animated title sequences, were made: Thunderbirds To The Rescue (1980) is a combination of "Trapped in the Sky" and "Operation Crash-Dive",Thunderbirds In Outer Space (1981) of "Sun Probe" and "Ricochet", and Countdown to Disaster (1982) of "Terror in New York City" and "Atlantic Inferno". Although rights issues entailed by the 1980s home video releases of the "Super Space Theater" compilations delayed VHS releases of individual Thunderbirds episodes (in their un-cut form) until the early 1990s, the UK versions proved to be a major commercial success for the distributor, Channel 5 Video.

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