I’ve always heard, “ALL YOU NEED IS A GOOD STORY”
 
THE GOOD PART:
 
In typical Hollywood tradition we were late, the story was delivered to Fox early December as Hollywood shut down for the holidays.  We figured it would be late January before they read it. NOT SO! Like a rocket it took off and we were in production early January. The remaining executives at Fox loved the story and FedEx’d it to those already out of town. Between Christmas and New Years it got a green light and checks were being cut before contracts were even written.
 
Everyone hit the ground running, Chris started pre-production, location scouting and casting, Troy got production design in gear and John began building the 85’ Mercury Rocket. The film was shot mostly on location in Santa Maria and at Vandenberg Air Force Base with the help of the 30th Space Wing. Every shooting technique was used except glass painting with full size sets, models, foreground miniatures and CGI.  All smoothly melded with the live action. Fortunately John was president of WonderWorks Entertainment at the time, which owned the space shuttle flight bridge and mid deck used in “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon”. So these magnificent sets contributed millions of dollars of production value to this $3.5 million dollar movie.  The film did well for Fox and ran over and over on their channel. We received tons of great comments from people that enjoyed it and loved seeing a teenager strive for the gold and make it.
 
THE SAD PART:

The Fox Family Channel was owned at the time by Saban Entertainment and was sold during Rocket’s release on TV. The film was never released to Video-DVD or other platforms. It won’t be available to the public until someone discovers it in the library.
 
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