Mars Express: Mackenzie Crook films the Beagle 2 adventure
· BehindLines newsroom
Toby Jones and Emily Watson have wrapped up their work on Mars Express, a film directed by Mackenzie Crook. According to the BBC, it is the first feature the actor has directed, and it tells the story of the scientist behind the first British craft to land on Mars, a machine that got "lost".
A couple of scientists
Toby Jones plays Colin Pillinger and Emily Watson plays his wife Judith; the BBC describes both actors as Bafta winners. Also according to the BBC, the couple began developing the uncrewed Beagle 2 probe to look for life on Mars, at a time when Colin Pillinger held a professorship in planetary sciences with the Open University, in Milton Keynes. The Telegraph & Argus of Bradford, whose article is partly drawn from a production press release, sets the story in the mid-1990s, against a soundtrack of Britpop classics. The paper describes a band of independent-minded outsiders who, with little experience of building spacecraft, challenged NASA and came close to winning.
A probe lost, then found
Beagle 2 was launched aboard the European Mars Express orbiter. Its landing was scheduled for 25 December 2003, but it did not send the signal confirming it had touched down. For years the mission was regarded as a failure; in January 2015, NASA images showed that the craft had in fact reached the surface, the BBC reports. Colin Pillinger had died eight months earlier, convinced that the probe had not landed safely. In the 1990s he had sought public backing and funding, relying on celebrities and pop stars to promote his mission.
Filming locations and production
According to the Telegraph & Argus, several scenes were filmed in Bradford, notably Margaret McMillan Tower, the city hall office of the Lord Mayor and the former textile mill Bulmer and Lumb, plus Leeds, Selby and York. According to the BBC, the backers of the film are CML Entertainment Finance, BBC Film, the BFI, Sky and Screen Yorkshire; the local paper also names Big Talk Studios and Altitude as the production companies. The script is by Joe Bone. Mackenzie Crook had already worked with Toby Jones on Detectorists, a BBC comedy that won Baftas, of which he was the writer, director and star. The release is expected in 2027, according to the BBC.
Why it matters
According to the BBC, the Beagle 2 mission was regarded as a failure for years, until images from 2015 showed that the probe had reached the surface of Mars; the film revisits that story. The information about the production comes from the BBC and the Telegraph & Argus, whose article is partly drawn from a production press release: the remarks by the producers and by Mackenzie Crook are their own.