- "It's Robot Wars on acid!"
- — Tom Gutteridge describes BattleBots to a UK audience[1]
Tom Gutteridge is a British director who has served as an executive producer for BattleBots since its second season on ABC in 2016.
He remained in his role as BattleBots transitioned to Discovery, and in 2020, was a key figure in negotiating a deal with Discovery which confirmed 50 hours of content which became the 2020 season, as well as 80 hours for the two years which followed.[2] This deal also encompassed several side series, beginning with BattleBots: Bounty Hunters on discovery+ and also including BattleBots: Champions and its sequel series.
Tom Gutteridge (center) in 2019.
Gutteridge has been a vocal advocate for British networks to pick up BattleBots, with numerous channels only picking up the first two ABC seasons. In April 2022, however, a deal was agreed with ITV4 for the 2018 season aired in the United Kingdom for the first time.
Gutteridge writes the scripts for the BattleBots: Destruct-A-Thon live shows. During their mid-2024 hiatus, he helped to rescript the show into a Red Team vs. Blue Team format.[3]
Outside BattleBots[]
In 1996, Tom Gutteridge originally pitched the idea of a television show based upon combat robotics to the Head of Entertainment for British network Channel 4. He showed footage of the most recent US Robot Wars event in San Francisco, made possible by Marc Thorpe, but was unsuccessful with the network. Taking higher-ups at the BBC to see several of the original robots such as La Machine and The Master, he eventually convinced them to pick up the idea in 1998. From then, the British show Robot Wars was produced.
- "I "discovered" RW in 1995 when a friend of mine brought back a home video he'd made in San Francisco of Marc Thorpe's Robot Wars - there was an event and he'd just gone along. So I thought, this was just about the most interesting, different, exciting thing I'd seen in years and I found out that an American lawyer called Steve Plotnicki had bought the rights from Marc. So I did a deal with him to create a TV show around the idea."
- — Tom Gutteridge on his initial association with Robot Wars
He founded the broadcasting company Mentorn, with whom the UK show Robot Wars was overseen by throughout its original run of seven series, even beyond Gutteridge selling the company in 2001. His involvement with the show included planning its concept, commissioning each of the House Robots and its distribution to the United States and European countries.