A film that never was.

I found some old copies of Starburst magazine whilst clearing out the house, all mostly dated between 1996 to 1999. Anyway there was a series of giant purple and silver coloured ads that caught my eye and instantly took me back to my teenage years. They were advertising for a chance to star in a ‘Uniquely British science fiction film’ entitled ‘legionnaires’.

Legionnaires

It would seem that anyone could star in the film, if they could only pony up the required cash (a measly £333) which would go towards funding some of the movie.

I also found various slim articles on the film and its progress which contained images of storyboards and concept art and this seems to imply that Starburst and Cult Times took it all very seriously as well (after all it had Jason Connery in a lead role!).

I mean the blurb for the trailer is designed for a deep Hollywood announcers voice, long booming bass sfx and moody lighting wouldn’t have gone amiss.

“IN THE LAST YEARS OF THE 20TH CENTURY MANKIND DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF TRAVELING BEYOND THE FINAL FRONTIER. SOMETHING WAS WATCHING. SOMETHING UNSEEN. SOMETHING UNKNOWN. SOMETHING UNINVITED. NOW ONLY ONE THING STANDS BETWEEN A WORLD WITHOUT A FUTURE AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD :- LEGIONNAIRES”

Legionnaires 2You can just picture it can’t you! A British Starship Troopers! Complete with wee Union Jack flags on the shoulders of their Mecha suits and stiff upper lips all round! In fact the entire premise was sold on its ‘Britishness’ that somehow this film would be the rebirth of home grown science fiction, an appealing thought in a world before the rebooted Dr WHO.

I remember showing the advert to a friend of mine on the same art course (ceramics) and he simply rolled his eyes into his skull and made a farting noise with his lips and said ‘con!’. He would be proven to be oddly prescient in that opinion.

‘But there’s a Freephone number at the bottom’ I said as this proved this couldn’t be a con. The ads made claims that you could be an extra, be in the crew, get a credit and that everyone would attend the opening night and get freebies, freebies, freebies!

Then… there was nothing, no film ever appeared and no news as to why either and to be honest I plum forgot about it until seeing the ad again.

My interest peaked I decided to do a bit of digging on the internet and amazingly this has thrown up a lot less than I may have first hoped for. Mainly I suppose as the internet was still fairly in its infancy back then and that most of the sites and chat rooms dealing with this topic will have been mothballed or shut for years now.

I did though manage to uncover something about it here and there, mainly angry pages of complaints from would be actors and investors as to why the film stalled. It seems that it did actually get to the point where they were producing merchandise and posters before they had even started filming it at Elstree Studio. It also seems that anyone who put the required £333 into the pot was counted not just as a shareholder but also given the chance for artistic input into the movie’s direction which never sounds good does it? The plot thickens!

UK

What appears to have gone on-

£80,000 of the money earmarked for the movie appears to have simply vanished, people were left narked and out of pocket despite claims that the company making the film was insured against any loss so everyone would have their money back if anything should happen. Yet even when Legionnaires Plc Company knew that all the information that they were using to sell the project was incorrect to say the least, for example there were no ‘name’ actors confirmed for any parts in the movie, they kept up the pretence and the recruitment drive for more cash investment and extras.

Fours years passed and the film remained in a limbo world of ‘no comment’. Whilst all this was happening the script would continue to be rewritten many times over changing in tone and moving away entirely from the original premise that had attracted many to the project. There are some accounts of extras having been filmed in a lonely, undermanned sound stage against a green screen for a few hours but little else appears to have been done apart from a couple of early CGI ‘teaser trailers’ shown at conventions such as Capscicon ’97 & Wolf 359.

Legionnaires Plc Company would eventually vanish off the map hounded by investors, the company website would remain and deny all dealings with the actual film, people would get angry, very angry and ‘This is Wiltshire’ would still be reporting the story in the year 2000 with-

Due to massive demand the company set up to produce Elstree Studios’ first sci-fi film since Star Wars 20 years ago has extended its share offer. Legionnaires plc says it has been receiving 18,000 calls each month since December from people interested in buying shares to help fund the project due for release next spring.

Yet it had all seemed so promising, the October 1997 issue of Starburst seemed to positively rave about the project and especially about the head people involved, Gary Boulton-Brown and Kathleen Fairbairn. Even saying that-

Unlike the Heretic (Very unlike) Legionnaires has a lot to say (and show) for itself, not least of which is the fact that Creative Independent now have an office at Elstree and studio space booked there from December.

Yet even with this rave report on the prospects of this project being a winner there was a note of caution from Gary Boulton-Brown which was rather telling-

Gary positively invites debate and awkward questioning regarding the all important share offer and how safe and guaranteed it is. He admits that the main cast has not been contacted as yet (at the time of going to print) and that there is no absolute guarantee in a venture like this

In the same article any concerns on the obvious lack of any real details about plot, casting or dates and even the ‘look’ of the film was easily brushed away by those involved claiming they feared their idea might be stolen by other studios and then being pipped to the post.

This is a film that was supposed to have been released sometime at the end of 1998 and it was claimed would forever change the face of British indie Science Fiction. Instead it left bitter disappointment, anger and a lot of debt and many, many questions unanswered and a poor Jason Connery sat waiting by the phone for a call back that never happened.

Jason ConneryThe deadline for investors to claim their money back ended in January 2002, Gary Boulton-Brown would continue to run another company called, somewhat ironically ‘Maverick Camera Ltd.’ (since dissolved) yet oddly enough some sources claim he was still registered as the Company Director of Legionnaires Plc until 2009 when he ‘resigned’, as for Kathleen Tamar Fairbairn she resigned from Legionnaires Plc in December 1998 at the height of the concern over the project. Lee Medcalf who was employed on the project as computer graphics conceptual artist and modeller stayed on until December 1999 with a ‘promotion’ to the title of ‘Full Modeller & Animator’ for the entire movie. He describes this time in his own words on a publicly accessible trade CV site –

Legionnaires PLC was a publicly funded production company that was formed to make the SF movie Legionnaires. The production company which was co run by Garry Boulton Brown and Kathy Fairbarn collapsed due to a DTI investigation in to impropriety in company finances.

…and there I’m afraid the trail goes cold but I’m sure that somewhere, someone will have the full story, or their side of it, up on another website.

In the end we had to wait until 2006 until we saw small union jack flags on any British Science Fictional offering coming anything close to what Legionnaires promised for a uniquely British take on sci-fi… and well, that didn’t go down too well with many.

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Written by Drew (35 Posts)


39 thoughts on “A film that never was.

  1. I am currently collecting memrobilia for this film – did you keep the magazines with the ads in? please email me? – cheers 🙂

    • Hi Space Cadet.
      I’m so sorry for the very late reply to your message but I’ve not been able to find the time to log onto this Blog as I’d like.
      In answer to your question yes I still have all the magazines with the articles and ads in them although I’d be unlikely to ever part with them as I’m a bit of a collector (frankly more like a horder).
      If you’d like any details about them such as issue numbers, publishing dates etc. so you could track down a few back copies just let me know. I’ve seen a few on Ebay in the past and only selling for a few pounds so I’m sure you’ll be able to track one or more down.
      I hope you might have enjoyed or found what little I’ve written about the saga of the film interesting, I can’t pretend to be an expert on what went down though and obviously I attempted to be unbiased and fair in what I’ve written.
      As I say in the post most of the “facts” and information I’ve used are drawn from contemporary magazine articles at the time as well as bits and pieces from a few very old and outdated websites about the subject not yet mothballed and mainly written by people with somewhat more jaundiced & biased views based on their experiences with the production.
      Many thanks for the message and for reading the blog in the first place, I can’t help thinking its a pretty hit n’ miss affair so far and I’m still trying to find my niche.
      take care.

      • Drew – Sorry – I only just found your reply.

        I’m now not convinced it’s worth doing much more on the memerobillia collecting front – but I did manage to get in touch
        With a couple of shareholders and a graphics guy.
        They seemed surprised that anyone would be remotely interested in finding out what happened….but dug up some stuff.. (To be honest, I’d forgotten about it until someone sent me a link to your blog.)

        Here’s a link to look at some stuff if you want to http://1drv.ms/1S1C5ha

        I have now been informed that The video, shown to shareholders was the only
        Footage ever generated/seen by the public or shareholders.
        When the DTI intervened, there was a ‘shareholders shoot’ at some sports centre near Radlett Herts. (see pics) This involved many shareholders, and was videotaped by a technician , who told people he’d just been been hired for the day and was not specifically a cameraman. ( He also, apparently, said he hadn’t seen a script or received any schedule…so this, unfortunately, rings true).

        The costumes look good…but I can’t see any film lighting, (just court floodlighting), other equipment or blue-screen capability. ( They also, apparently asked for parking payment…and sold expensive slices of pizza to shareholders, in the absence of catering.)

        As for where the money went: I’d guess that lots of it went on graphics guys.?

        Through, what I’m presuming was their Ltd production company, a new sci-fi channel advert (a shareholder taped it and, apparently’ paid for their unborn child to have a ‘part’ – he never received anything!)

        Around the same time as all this…. The director also, apparently formed a girl band but I’m not sure if there was any connection here to any of the companies…so it might have been a hobby thing.

        Maybe the truth is out there…somewhere…and is completely plausible…and I am being overly cynical – Love a good sci-fi mystery…

  2. Hi,
    nice write up :-)…I unfortunately was one of those people who bought a share and I still have it as a reminder never to get conned again. The advert was even on the SF channel so I was completely taken in that it was legit…I nearly even made it to being an extra and obviously would have been spotted to take the leading role…lol

    • Hi Sean, first let me say I’m very sorry for this very late reply to your comment. I’m just rubbish at following things up I’m afraid. Secondly many thanks for reading and extra thanks for saying it was a nice write up, I’ve tried to do the best I could with what little information is still rambling around out there and I hope I’ve been fair with the story as I understand it as well. Sorry you were amongst the many who ultimately lost out though, it was horror stories like this which stunted many a later genuine attempts at generating support for indie filmmaking sadly. If any more comes to light I’ll be sure to update the blog with a follow up. Again cheers for reading!

  3. Very interesting article. I too was an investor. I remember receiving a crappy poster for my £333. I was also teased with a day of filming in a quarry but that particular rug was pulled a number of times before it vanished.

    What really pisses me off is that under the terms of the investment they had to raise a certain amount from shares and if they failed to do that then they had to refund everyone. They failed to reach the target by some margin but continued regardless leaving all investors without legal recourse to get back our cash.

  4. I am sitting here reading your interesting article in my (now) tight fitting Legionnaires t-shirt. Yesterday I was out in my Legionnaires baseball cap. I lost over a grand in my desire to be in a movie. My Dad never forgave me! All I have to show for it are 2 items of clothing that haven’t aged too badly!
    I never lost the pursuit of my dream though…For the last five years I’ve been in commercials, tv & yes, film.
    I can’t talk about recent work, because of NDA’S but I’ve worked in Skyfall, The World’s End, even Midsomer Murders lol
    Don’t ever stop chasing your dreams

  5. Hi Drew.
    I was anothee of those shareholders & I did attend the filming in Radlett. We were dressed up like black overalls & placed on s raised walkway with green screen behind us (I think there were 30+ extras). We were mesnt to march as if trudging through a snow storm on an alien planet. I never saw the footage so I’d love yo know if it still exists. Like Xtra, I’ve got the baseball cap, A3 poster & the contract / shares we all got. I only found about the partial refunds in 2003, after the deadline had passed. Oh well, I’ve got memories of a film that cost md a grand & is worth the resale value of the cap! Put me off investing again.

  6. I also bought a share, as did my Brother. SFX magazine had a thing about it (possibly an insert) and it convinced us to go for it. I still have my cap and poster, and we went down to the filming.
    I remember thinking it was a bit odd that we were dressed up against a blue or green screen, but the lighting seemed quite bad and didn’t even light up our bug furry boots. I have some photos somewhere.
    I found out about the partial refund about 20 mins ago. That’s a bit annoying. We should have been told about that.

  7. Glad to see I’m not the only one who remembers this (attempted) film. I remember reading on another site many years ago that the company squandered a lot of funds on plush offices at Elstree(?) studios, before moving out to cheaper premesis, before eventually being wound up by the DTI, following complaints from investors.

    Seem to recall they were touting for buisiness at a couple of Birmingham Memoribilia Shows at the NEC (which have since evolved into Comic cons), trying to attract investors during the mid-late 90s and even had a couple of guys in the armoured space suit costumes they were going to use in the film to try and drum up interest. I did pick up a couple of flyers (which I have long since thrown out) and remember seeing an advert (I forget in which magazine) saying the offer for investment had been extended but that was the last I heard.

    • As a shareholder, I went to the show at the NEC. They didn’t want to know you unless you wanted to buy more shares. There were also pictures of Robin Curtis and Walter Koenig as signed up stars.

  8. Count me as another conned shareholder – after Wolf 359 – where the producers had had “talks” with Walter Koenig (he himself mentioned this in one of his panels).

    The reason I’ve just found this site is because in clearing the attic I found the Legionnaires Limited Edition Poster still rolled up in the tube in came in through the post and decided to do some online hunting down memory lane!

  9. Hello everyone.
    Very interesting to read all your takes on this – I have been amazed at how many people have now been in touch, willing to share info on what happened to the ‘film’: *Unfortunately, it seems that the comedy of errors I now have, is more of a story than the film ever was.

    In a nutshell: There was no script – there are several ‘scripts’, but they never owned the rights to film any.
    There were no ‘stars’ – no artists were ever actually booked. No storyboard, no models, no schedule…
    There were some really good, professionally designed costumes…but as there were not really characters, these were somewhat designed blind.

    There was a ‘shoot’ on video but the operator was a technician, not a cameraman and was told to wipe the videotape immediatley after the day and reuse it.

    Good news is that none of this seemed to be in any way the fault of Mr Boulton Brown. It was everyone else who didn’t believe in his vision and questioned his integrity. There is a happy ending too – Inspired by directing the Radlett shareholders, he and a couple of surviving ‘Legionnaires’ affilites went a couple of miles down the road to produce/direct a low budget feature, with a script/cast etc. Due to many ensuing ‘issues’ I dont believe that this was ever available for commercial release…though it seems to have won an award or two…. did anyone see it?
    http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0099617/awards?ref_=m_nm_awd&mode=desktop

  10. I too was about to get married had stored some extra funds up and convinced my wife it would be a good idea because, you know it was in SFX. We parted with the £333 and myself and a mate drove up the “Studios” in London (it wasn’t Elstree it was near Elstree)…. and we had a lot of sitting around with no food or drink (yes I remember the pizza’s for sale) and eventual got to trudge across a raised walkway against blue screen – all swapping over as tonnes of other gullible “Shareholders” came out. I think I remember them saying they were going for (what was to become Clone army) type effect but instead of CGI hundreds of extras layered on top. The costumes weren’t jump suits as above (interesting!) but Fur lined boots, hats and Hoth type coats with lance spear things. BTW the studios were a large inflatable type Tennis court thing.
    That was it – was out of there after a few hours and then drove straight to MacD and straight home to Wales.
    When it all went down it seemed a big embarrassment to SFX (didn’t know it was in Starburst!)…. and no one could ever get hold of Boulton Brown. I even wrote him a stinking letter and think I got bog standard letter back from his Solicitor.
    Yes, basically they all spent the £333’s on “whatever” (my understanding was very little of the “CGI” had been finished) and we were shafted as Shareholders and never got a penny back. I am still livid about it. Unsubscribed to SFX not long after in disgust that they had promoted it themselves so heavily. To be fair I bet some of them got suckered too. Oh yeah – I never got a cap I got a Poster and that was it.
    I still have some photos of the day if anyone interested and probably still have my file with all the legal bits and bobs in.

  11. WoW just found this, I remembering emptying my bank account to become an investor I got a small poster but nothing else not even a cap or t-shirt, I was at Wolf 359 to, great times (wolf 359 convention that is).. and only just found out i could of got some cash back lol, wish I could find the script

  12. Very, very interesting article. It’s odd as I was just looking at my crew jacket, which is thriving, and wondered what happened to this movie. I was the technician hired for the day. It was a fun day, if a little shambolic and I stayed late to help out. Shame nothing came of it. Thanks to the author for this well written and researched piece. Cheers

  13. Well, you might be interested in knowing that I am the technical artist who designed all of the ships which were to be used in that movie and that I had a very strange meeting with the guy running it at Elstree Studios in North London in which he openly ‘bragged’ that the same chair that I was sitting in was sat in by some such director or star – the point is, I wasn’t there to be impressed. I was there to contribute to the movie. I spent two hours discussing the designs with him, did some sketches and went away.

    A month or so later I received a phone call one morning from this same person and he was ranting down the phone at me that none of the work was of suitable ‘quality’ to be used, yet strangely it was good enough to be used for blueprints from which the 3D models seen in the promotional posters! So I didn’t get paid … and neither did a bunch of other artists, both 2D and 3D. I was the 2D lead artist on that project so imagine my surprise when we all heard the money was gone, so was he and that he had ”run off” taking the lot with him. To this day I tell people that he single-handedly ruined any chance of that movie being made, and it is my understanding that Walter Koenig (Star Trek, Moontrap) was equally ticked off as he was onboard as one of the actors for said venture and was promised much and got zero for his efforts. Please note that his part in it was well-documented, and his displeasure was merely ‘scuttlebutt’ among the fans who were involved in the project after the fact.

  14. I remember the enthusiasm of shareholders in the late 1990s when it genuinely seemed that ‘Legionnaires’ would take off and become the UK’s answer to ‘The Night Of The Living Dead’ or ‘The Blair Witch Project’. Maybe if Roger Corman had signed on we could have made a go of it, but he thought it was too risky and bailed. I can’t fault his judgement. In retrospect the whole project was deeply flawed and probably ill-conceived from the start. Everyone lost their shirt in this endevour. I still have my promotional baseball cap and t-shirt. They sent a butt-load of posters too, and I kept one two for old time’s sake. I agree with the earlier post that said a film about all THIS would be more interesting than ‘Legionnaires’ ever could have been…

  15. I’ve just found the crew jacket that my sister bought for me as part of a present which included the single share. Oh what might have been…

  16. My wife and I also bought a share each,we can’t even find our baseball caps now,but I know we have the poster somewhere.Let me know when there is a massive payout to us all,ha ha

  17. Well I remember the posters, but thankfully I was too young and too broke to contribute. A friend of mine did get follow up post asking for more money at one point, but I doubt he put anything in.

    More recently I found this guy while I was searching for potential hires on my own film projects: [LINK REMOVED by request]

    His list of employers includes Legionairres Plc and confirms the DTI investigation. I think everyone got burned on this.

  18. I just found this thanks to getting quoted in the article and my CV site quote getting used in it… Better late than never.

    I can’t speak for the whole DTI behind the scenes stuff however I heard there were supposedly bad cheques written and in addition to that shareholder displeasure had reached a point that they instigated the DTI investigation.

    I did indeed stay on as CGI team member until the DTI came in one morning and seized all of the PCs, software and edit bay kit. Its been over 20 years ago so my recollection is slightly fuzzy but in hindsight the key delay for CGI was a complete lack of experience and terrible project management. There was a script but it was continually shifting and being rewritten. Talent was being interviewed for roles but nothing seemed set in stone and the main production staff team was incredibly small (The Director, The Producer, an editor / sound designer and a single runner) for what was going to be “Jane Bond in space”

    I worked with one other CG guy in a small office in Elstree almost 24/7 (there were no windows and at one point we only knew we’d been in the office a full 24 hours because the runner was wearing new clothes). There were ten initial shots we were working on which were…

    An opening shot of Saturn and its rings – Think Star Trek Voyager opening

    A chase through the belt by a single probe ship. This was four shots basically variations on camera angle, some were on the nose of the ship as it dodged and weaved around while others were chasing the ship or ahead of the ship looking back.

    Another three shots were of the Avenger (the big craft on the promotional images) this involved a close up (poster shot), a star destroyer style overhead shot and a swing around the camera from right to left.

    There was one shot of a space station but that was purely concept and cobbled together from parts of the Avenger ship.

    And finally the logo reveal…

    The first big problem with the CGI was we were using Newtek Lightwave 5.5 to produce the graphics and Lightwave had a problem at the time of models could not be more than 65,000 polygons. So something like The Avenger needed to be loaded in about 20 parts. Even by today’s standards the model work would be slow to render but the director insisted that every bolt be properly modelled rather than how it would be done these days modelling something which is seen and using texture maps for small details that would not be seen or seen at a distance. The upshot was that on a Intel Pentium 2 PC running at 300Mhz (which was our fastest machine in the office) a single frame of the ship would take approx 5-6 hours to render.

    For reference a fly by sequence of the ship was approx 20 seconds or 500 frames so do the maths on that one…

    The second and more serious problem with the CGI was the director. His lack of experience working with CG meant that he was continually changing his mind every day on everything. From the type of monochrome colour scheme for the space shots – one minute he’d walk in see a single rendered frame in a coppery brown colour and claim he wanted a green hue to everything. The renders were stopped, colours adjusted and then re rendered at which point the following day he would angrily ask why we changed it from the coppery brown on the promotional images – through to the shape of the ships and how they moved.

    This kind of erratic behaviour increased as the production moved on, changing of the ship designs wholesale, changing of the ship orientations, random requests to render the ship in certain ways to put online then abandoning the idea, the list goes on. There was a moment when work paused on Legionnaires to work on a trailer for an X-Files / UFO film which was also to be a shareholder funded production. The trailer was simply a road illuminated by headlights before a flying saucer flew over head and washed out the screen with white light. This was quickly dropped as the production on Legionnaires became more pressured due to scrutiny by the shareholders and SF press.

    The erratic behaviour and randomness of the schedule and the lack of clear direction resulted in the other CG guy one day deciding he had had enough. While being berated by the director that another shot the guy had spent all week on was not right and had apparently been changed incorrectly (not true the director had forgotten he had asked for lights on the ship the day before) the CG guy without saying a word stood up looked at the director, laughed and walked out never to be seen again.

    The team then became simply me…

    The shots for the ships were stopped as the shoot date was announced for the shareholders and I was pulled away from the space shots to produce a prison on Titan.

    I had no knowledge of what shots were going to be made, no designs for the prison and certainly no camera information to match any shot footage that was due to be composited into this prison if it was made. I was told that this did not matter and that I should make the prison like New York as seen in the recently released Fifth Element – The director had seen the film and had a copy of Cinefex on the films production and would carry it around like a bible.

    So I worked for 72 hours straight to make a blocky yet detailed fortress using the film stills as reference. The director informed me that it didn’t look as detailed as the Fifth Element footage which caused an argument where I had to explain that Digital Domain had hundreds of artists, designers and a render farm probably the size of a football pitch… Where as all we had was one extremely burnt out Lightwave artist trying to make film quality models alone on a single Pentium 2… Which prompted the hiring of three other PC’s from the local computer shop in Borehamwood high street…. That was the answer, all I needed was a tiny render farm apparently…

    Leading up to the shoot date the script was being rewritten and the director was trying to get the actress Anna Chancellor (Duck face from Four Weddings and a Funeral) on board. He had, had a few meetings with her and claimed negotiations were going well. Additionally, to raise some cash, the director tried to get me involved with the VFX on Thunderbirds when it was still in pre-production with Peter Hewitt as director. Peter came in to the office once and described a scene involving Thunderbird 2 and a oil rig rescue. But by the time I had even started to consider the madness of getting involved in something like that while also working on Legionnaires, Hewitt had left the production and had been replaced by Jonathan Frakes, and the production company had wisely decided to get a proper VFX company to work on the project (Framestore CFC as they were known at the time)

    The shoot date got closer and I spent longer and longer in the office (I had only been recently married in September 98 and had not spent more than a couple of days since then at home with my wife). The first day out of the office was to go to the shoot location which was an inflatable tennis court. I was then tasked with constructing the set and scaffolding (which I had zero experience in but thanks to some instructions I found in a box I managed to do). The editor and a couple of helpers (fans from the Wolf359 convention circuit who were hired as “security”) painted some blue boards to act as blue screen and the next day we set up the whole thing and did the shoot.

    The shoot was a miserable affair, people being covered in guard furs and herded into the inflatable court and filmed walking back and forth on a blue screen on some wobbly scaffold and then waiting outside in winter drizzle.

    By the time it was done I was frazzled, the shareholders were pissed off and most of the footage was borderline useless (With more experience over the years the lighting on the bluescreen caused massive hard shadows and hot spots from the paint being wet, keying the footage would have been a nightmare). The following day the footage was taken (along with some rendered frames of the ship that had survived being endlessly colour corrected) to the VFX post production house Cinesite. This was to transfer the ship frames to celluloid and get the shareholder footage on to a ZIP disk (remember those) to be put into the 3D prison that was still rendering for the past 48 hours.

    The Avenger and the probe ship shots were transferred to film and the director and editor started work on making a promo teaser to show to shareholders and I was dragged off the prison shot to make an animated logo and title strap line for the promo. By now we had been visited once by someone from the DTI and a journalist from SFX magazine both interested in what was going on, neither seeming entirely convinced by the director showing his visual effect unit to be one fat bloke who clearly had not seen daylight in weeks staring gormlessly at a computer screen like some kind of zombie.

    By this point I was surviving on approximately 5 hours sleep a week and we were approaching December 98 at this point, and I remember this extremely clearly, I was stood in the car park of Elstree one evening, I had not been home in almost a week and I had to just go home. At which point the director ran out to me before I got into my car (how dangerous was that to consider driving home in that state? In hindsight I shudder every time I think of that) and said… “Frankly I can’t believe you’re abandoning us now… We need this [promo] done… You leave now and I think you’re going to have to be here working on this over Christmas. You might want to tell your wife that” and he walked off.

    I got in the car and sobbed… I think I was totally broken at that point… A lack of direction and complete mismanagement had led to this and I was being punished for working “only” a full 24/7 week and leaving to get some sleep. I couldn’t face spending Christmas alone in a room with a couple of rendering PCs while the rest of the “crew” went home.

    I drove home at 2am that night on the M25 and remembered that it was my wife’s birthday that day and I had forgotten entirely.

    I broke at that point.

    I drove past my home straight to my parents house (to this day I don’t know why) and I had a full mental breakdown. I spent the next few hours sobbing and gibbering to confused parents, who eventually called out a doctor, who dosed me up with Valium just to calm me down. I slept for almost a day straight. My parents informed my wife what had happened and she was worried sick… When I woke, I had a number of missed calls from the Legionnaires offices saying I needed to come in immediately.

    Against protests from wife and family I went back to discover the director running out to meet me in the car park saying that the DTI were grabbing all the materials and assets from the offices and the production was being shut down (this included repossessing my car which I discovered was a hire and had not been paid for)

    I was told to take the car and go home the DTI would reclaim it (and backup software in the boot) in time, but hopefully the director could sort it out. I asked about my pay and was told that would not be happening until the shareholders and debtors were paid off if he couldn’t get the production back up and running.

    I drove home and that was that. The car was claimed a couple of days later (along with the offsite backup of the zip drive, a copy of photoshop 3.0 and Lightwave) the video assets and all materials were claimed and the PCs were also taken away.

    With all the materials seized there was nothing at all to show anyone and nothing to prove I even worked on the project. I saw online on the website Coming attractions (that used to be nothing but a database of films and their production with a comment section for fans) that Legionnaires was still listed as “in production” and in the comments they were still looking for funding. Knowing this to not be true and knowing what a disaster the production was I spilled my side of the story, trying to stop anyone throwing good money after bad. I had not heard anything from anyone on the production since that day the DTI had swooped in and once I had laid out everything I knew on Coming Attractions listing for Legionnaires, two things happened…

    1. The “security” fanboys from the film shoot day started to gaslight me online claiming they were exec producers and that I was some kind of disgruntled employee who had been fired – Amusing given that their total involvement with the film was precisely standing in a tennis court and painting some chip board blue

    2. The director phoned me Christmas eve to tell me that he had a “crack legal team” who wanted to sue me to hell and back and he was holding them off… This unsurprisingly turned out to be a complete lie…

    So December to approximately March 99 I was harangued and harassed online by disgruntled Shareholders aiming at the only guy from the production who had even stuck their head over the parapet and the production staff who had moved off Elstree lot to, I think it was Gate studio, just up the road from Elstree… Then the whole lot vanished and that was the end of that.

    I tried to get my payment for the time between Nov 98 and Dec 98 but was told by the DTI that any money from the auction of the materials grabbed from the studio would go towards debtor repayment and there was not likely to be enough to repay the shareholders and definitely not enough to repay staff.

    There is a lot more tiny details about that time that keep coming back to me as I write this so apologies for the random rambling nature of the post and to be honest I’m not sure anyone is going to read this given the distance in time of the comments posts but at least I got some details down somewhere that this film existed, albeit briefly, in production.

    I think if I wrote a book about the whole affair I think it would serve as a gold standard template warning about the perils of publicly financed independent film making.

    • ahah! – Hello lightwave – I just read this – really sad to read so many nightmare experiences, with no kind of ‘closure’ or acounability. I will try to get in touch with you. May have some of your zip disks.

    • Amazing story. Around that time and into the 2000s stories like that keep cropping up. I think I was so nearly your colleague on that if a few things had been different. I just found this blog after wondering what happened to that Legionnaires movie I was sideways contacted about possibly working on the vfx. Bullet dodged.

    • Hi Lightwave7871.

      Thank you for taking the time to explain this so thoroughly. This is a really interesting read and I’m sorry to hear about how much of a toll the experience took on you.

      In that respect, I feel I got away lightly, just £333 down.

  19. Its my friends brother and she has not seen him for over 25 years, she desp wants to get back in touch with him. Any info I would be really grateful TIA

  20. Thanks for this explanation of what happened, I was one of the duped shareholders and never got a bean from the insolvency team.
    I still have the poster and cap somewhere and was in the second block of filming that was cancelled after I was already in Northampton hotel, ready and waiting.
    A book or YouTube documentary about the whole debacle would be a nice bit of closure for us all.

  21. I’ve been looking through my attic and found the Legionnaires poster I got from the NEC Birmingham in 97/98 and I’ve no idea what to do with it. Does anyone know someone who would like it? I never had the money to sign up to be an extra but remember feeling very excited about the film prospects.

  22. Thanks for this article.

    It’s really interesting the comments (in fact I came across this article years ago and just re-read it – fascinating to see how many people have connected with it since!)

    I was also an investor. I remember being incandescent when I discovered they’d carried on despite not reaching the investment threshold, so the promise of our money back was reneged. I *think* I claimed the tax back in time (it was a long time ago).

  23. Wow – it’s so amazing to read all of the stories here. I was also one of those investors who parted with my hard-earned £666 for two shares! I still have the poster, rolled up in the tube it was supplied in. I did have a t-shirt too but… damn… my expanding waistline meant that it could no longer fit and so was thrown away many moons ago lol. I remember it was black with the purple Legionnaires logo…

    I also went down to the place in Radlett on that miserable Saturday (I’m pretty sure it was a Saturday) and endured hours of waiting about and then trudging up and down some wobbly platforms while being filmed in the drizzle. My overwhelming memory of that day was of disappointment due to the ‘shambleness’ of it all, and how flipping cold it was. My feet and hands were like blocks of ice after a while. I cursed on the train back home, lol.

    @Lightwave7871, thank you so much for sharing what happened here, and providing some really enlightening insights; we never knew what really went on with this production, so I really appreciate your input here. I’m also really, really saddened and actually very gutted for what happened to you. It sounded truly awful, and I hope you weren’t traumatised too badly by what sounds like a nightmare experience for you.

    Like one of the comments mentioned above, there seems to be a story here – a documentary about what happened would be very compelling and… who knows… it might lead on to reawakening of the project.

    When the project first kicked off, I remember having a video of a short 20-sec trailer – I guess this would have been created by you, Lightwave? It has since been lost to the many changes of PCs since.

    Are any of these video clips or any other digital media still available? If anyone has any links, please share!

    Take care, all.

  24. I’d forgotten about Legionaires it’s been so long.
    I too was one of the shareholders who put their £333 in (I and my wife actually sold our Abby national shares I had to pay for it, as we had no other savings).
    I was talking with friends yesterday about the odd bit of extras work I’d done back then and legionaries pinged back into my memories.
    My son found this link about it. He’s now the same age I was back then.
    I’ve still got the poster (framed hidden away in the loft as I couldn’t face seeing it for years) and the baseball cap, don’t think I’ve still got the T-shirt?.
    I came down from Manchester with my wife to be one of the shareholder “extras” filmed at Elstree. I remember how unorganised it seemed and the painted blue screen
    The fur costume part I’d forgotten about but got some vague flashbacks just now while reading all this.
    I felt guilty for some years after for using the Abby shares, (which would have been worth three times that a few years later) to pay for it but my wife’s never complained about it or made me feel that way.
    Thankyou Lightwave7871 for finally filling in the blanks as to what went on in this great Legionaires movie fiasco. I’m also sorry you had to go through all that you did back then.

    Such a shame so many like myself parted with hard earned cash with nothing to show for what could have been something great.
    You live and learn as they say.

  25. I’ve just come across this thread. I too was a shareholder and bought two shares. I too walked along an elevated platform dressed an an “alien” in some furry costume at a country club near Elstree.

    I received a baseball cap and a poster and I recall receiving a letter from BDO as liquidators or receivers. Anyway, I lost my cash like others!

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