The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Around £177, 789 (or $350, 000), it seems. Remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the huge Hollywood auction by Profiles in History, which had an enormous amount of science fiction and fantasy material in it, from posters and signed photos to ray guns from Forbidden Planet, models from Star Wars and even, apparently, animatronic creatures from the studios of the late Stan Winston. Well the BBC reports that the auction has been round and if you recall the model TIE Fighter from the original A New Hope Star Wars movie which they thought might be one of the more popular items, well, it was. $350 thousand. Blimey. Not bad for a second-hand space craft, slightly damaged, one previous owner, 285 million miles on the clock… Mind you, I can’t help but notice Profile in History’s own website flashes a pic of the TIE Fighter up and the figure $402, 000, so someone, somewhere doesn’t have the right exact figure, but either way its a pretty impressive amount for a model for a relatively small budget 70s movie – who would have thought back then, in a summer movie theatre a long time ago, that thirty years later we’d still be so obsessed with it…

Michael J Fox’s hoverboard from the Back to the Future movies sold for £27, 938 while the Holy Grail from the third Indiana Jones film went under the hammer for £11, 429 – another movie religious ‘relic’, the tablets of the Ten Commandments carried by Charles Heston went for £30, 492. Rumours that there is actually an eleventh commandment on the tablets, added just for Chuck, reading “thou shalt not surrender thy firearm, save with thy cold, dead hand” cannot be substantiated at this time and I may just have dreamt it. And that groovy Forbidden Planet ray gun and holster? It went for a shade over £20, 000. No, I didn’t buy it!Shame, would have looked great hanging over my desk in the FPI blogcave.