London, 7 September 2015: Spaceship Away! The science fiction action hero Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future, is set to return as an audio drama series.

Independent production company B7 Media, in association with the Dan Dare Corporation, has announced that BAFTA nominees Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle will be the lead writers on a new Dan Dare audio drama series. Former Marvel Comics editor John Freeman is attached as creative consultant.

The new Dan Dare series will adapt core concepts from the character’s original appearance in the 1950s and ’60s comic Eagle, delivering exciting adventure, explore the wonders of space and bring us involving, memorable characters. While doing so it will remain true to the vision of Eagle creator, Reverend Marcus Morris, and to Dan Dare’s original illustrators, most notably the work of Frank Hampson.

B7 Media’s numerous audio productions include the recent award-winning BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles; acclaimed Syrian drama The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War and the popular Blake’s 7 audio adventures.

Announcing the acquisition of audio rights from the Dan Dare Corporation, and the commissioning of Kurti and Doyle as lead writers, audio producer/director Andrew Mark Sewell confirmed the production company’s Dan Dare adventures will stay true to the spirit of the original, expanding and developing the characters, and taking them deeper into the universe than ever before.

“Dan Dare will again defend the Earth against the Mekon, their battle beginning anew in the hearts and minds of a modern audience. Our creative team has a strong track record of beautifully blending fact and fiction, with bold storytelling.”

Dan Dare is no stranger to audio adaptation. Almost as soon as the character first featured in Eagle comic in the 1950s, a comic that sold in the millions every week, Radio Luxembourg broadcast his adventures for five years. This series launched with an adaptation of Dare’s first encounter with the villainous alien, the Mekon, on Venus. It starred Noel Johnson as Dan Dare, who also played Dick Barton on BBC Radio after World War Two.

Spanish-language adventures were broadcast by Radio Madrid from 1954 featuring “Diego Valor”, Dan’s Spanish incarnation, and in 1990 the BBC also adapted the much-loved hero for a short lived radio series starring Mick Ford.

Drawn from the original Eagle comic strips illustrated by Frank Hampson and others – the first ‘Venus’ series onwards – and inspired by the 1951 Radio Luxembourg series, B7 Media’s incarnation will be a new Dan Dare for today, serialised in 15-minute episodes, as all good radio space opera should be!

“The history of Dan Dare on radio goes back to the days of Radio Luxembourg when it was a highly successful weekly show,” notes Colin Frewin – Chief Executive of the Dan Dare Corporation Limited. “The time is now perfect for Dan Dare to return to the radio waves as one of Britain’s greatest space heroes, the ‘James Bond of Space’, and a true British superhero.”