Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future

I was a fan of this Canadian Cyberpunk TV series when I was young and own the first two series on DVD. One night recently watching late night TV I watched a "Max Headroom" movie. This featured the plot of the first episode of the TV series yet it featured an entirely different English cast (except Matt Frewer who played Edison Carter/Max Headroom). Why are there two versions of this story? Was it an English movie that later got adapted into a Canadian TV show?

max-headroom

Best Answer

You are correct. The movie you refer to was a British television pilot movie, intended to provide a backstory for the Max Headroom character, who presented a show called The Max Headroom Show in the style of a music video host.

The subsequent U.S. series was partially British-funded. The first few episodes of the T.V. series were essentially the film, but re-shot for a U.S. audience using U.S. actors.

From Wikipedia:

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future is a 1985 cyberpunk television film created by Chrysalis Visual Programming Ltd. for Channel 4 in the UK to provide a back story for Max Headroom, a computer generated TV host. A British produced, yet American broadcast, television series, Max Headroom, was later developed from the original film. HBO provided some of the original funding.

Pictures about "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future"

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future - Low Angle View of Spiral Staircase Against Black Background

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future - Gray Double-bell Clock

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future - Plasma Ball Illustration

What does Max Headroom say?

He was the spokesman for New Coke (after the return of Coca-Cola Classic), delivering the slogan "Catch the wave!" (in his staccato, stuttering playback as "C-c-catch the wave!").

Was Max Headroom in Back to the Future?

Behind the scenes In commentary on the DVD for Back to the Future Part II, Bob Gale described the video waiter scene as follows: "This is a riff on Max Headroom, which was a popular show in the 1980s.

Who was the voice behind Max Headroom?

Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incident of November 22, 1987, Chicago. This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1978 and March 1, 1989 without a copyright notice, and its copyright was not subsequently registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within 5 years.