Updated: May 23, 2024

A group of 14 original ink on paper concept illustrations from Irwin Allen's project The Day the World Ended by his frequent illustrator Tom Cranham. The project would ultimately morph into the very different feature film When Time Ran Out... ( Warner Bros., 1980 ).

Allen's volcano thriller was originally intended to be a period film based on the non-fiction book The Day the World Ended by Gordan Thomas and Max Gordon-Witts ( Open Road Integrated Media, 1969 ), which chronicled the horrific volcanic eruption of Mount Pelee in 1902 on the island of Martinique. The event killed 30,000 people. Allen purchased the rights to the book. However, when When Time Ran Out... made it to the screen, after a long development process, it had been fictionalized and modernized into a fairly typical disaster film about a volcanic eruption near a luxury resort. Some predictions of the action in When Time Ran Out... can be seen in these early conceptual drawings, particularly one of the film's protagonists trying to survive a cataclysmic bridge collapse ( as in the climax of the finished film ).

Cranham worked on many Allen projects including Lost in Space ( CBS, 1965-68 ), Land of the Giants ( ABC, 1968-70 ), City Beneath the Sea ( Warner Bros. Television, 1971 ), The Poseidon Adventure ( 20th Century Fox, 1972 ), The Towering Inferno ( 20th Century Fox, 1972 ), The Swarm ( Warner Bros., 1978 ), and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure ( Warner Bros., 1979 ), as well as other iconic films like Jurassic Park ( Universal Pictures, 1993 ), Star Trek: The Motion Picture ( Paramount Pictures, 1979 ), and Blade Runner ( Warner Bros., 1982 ).

Largest: Approx. 22 x 27 inches ( each ); 27 x 2 x 2 inches ( folded ) Provenance Tom Cranham by descent to Gina Cranham.

Value: $7,000. ( Set )