Editing Things to Come (section)

==Production==
''Things to Come'' sets out a future history from 1940 to 2036. In the screenplay, or "treatment"<ref>Wells (1935), p.11</ref> that Wells published in 1935, before the film was released, the story ends in "A.D. 2054".<ref>Wells (1935), pp.91–93; Wells mentions the date four times on these pages, but in the "Introductory Remarks", he gives the date as "A.D. 2055" (p. xi)</ref>

Wells is sometimes incorrectly assumed to have had a degree of control over the project that was unprecedented for a screenwriter. Posters and the main title bill the film as "H. G. Wells' Things to Come", with "an Alexander Korda production" appearing in smaller type. In fact, Wells ultimately had no control over the finished product, with the result that many scenes, although shot, were either truncated or not included in the finished film.<ref name="Cooper, Nick 2012, page 14">Cooper (2012), p.14</ref> The rough-cut reputedly ran to 130 minutes; the version submitted to the [[British Board of Film Censors]] was 117m 13s; it was released as 108m 40s (later cut to 98m 06s) in the UK, and 96m 24s in the United States (see below for later versions).<ref>Cooper (2012), p.18</ref> Wells's script (or "film treatment") and selected production notes were published in book form in 1935 and reprinted in 1940 and 1975. An academic edition annotated by [[Leon Stover]] was published in 2007. The script contains many scenes that were either never filmed or no longer exist, although the extant footage also includes scenes not in the published script (e.g. the Boss's victory banquet after the capture of the colliery).<ref>Cooper (2012), p.17</ref>

Wells originally wanted the music to be recorded in advance, and have the film constructed around the music, but this would have impeded editing, and so the score, by [[Arthur Bliss]], was fitted to the film afterwards in a more conventional way.{{Disputed inline|Talk:Things to Come#Music timing|date=December 2014}} A concert suite drawn from the film has remained popular; as of 2015, numerous recordings of it were still in print.{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}

The film was made at Denham Film Studios, while the site was still under construction.{{citation needed|date=September 2022}}

After filming had already begun, the Hungarian abstract artist and experimental filmmaker [[László Moholy-Nagy]] was commissioned to produce some of the effects sequences for the re-building of Everytown. Moholy-Nagy's approach was partly to treat it as an abstract light show, but only some 90 seconds of material was used, e.g. a protective-suited figure behind corrugated glass (which could be Terry-Thomas, as the figure has a moustache and he was billed as 'A Man of the Future). In the autumn of 1975 a researcher found a further four sequences which had been discarded.<ref name="frayling">Frayling (1995), pp.72-73</ref>

The art design in the film is by [[Vincent Korda]], brother of the producer. The futuristic city of Everytown in the film is based on London: a facsimile of [[St Paul's Cathedral]] can be seen in the background.<ref name="Cooper, Nick 2012, page 14"/>