I saw it in a movie once, Reign of Fire (2002)

In 2002, Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey stared in a very forgettable movie called Reign of Fire. The story is this; dragons are woken from a long hibernation after excavation for the London Underground penetrates their undiscovered cave. From there, the dragons destroy London and a bunch of other unnamed cities and are finally beaten back by a small group of civilians and military types.

In fact, I only ever watched it once (and, not even the whole way through), remembering only two redeeming things about the movie....

....the dragons, I thought they were pretty cool....

....and the Chieftain tank!

Reign of Fire was filmed mostly in Ireland with one of main sets, the ruined castle, in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains National Park. With the most of the Chieftains being pulled from British frontline service in 1996, the producers didn't appear to have too much difficulty in securing at least one for the film.

The tank in the movie didn't just play a bit part or was merely a background prop. Other than not being able to shot a projectile out it's main cannon, it was a fully functioning and operational vehicle, moving under it's own power in quite a few scenes.

The hard part, despite living in the internet age, is finding credible information on this particular Chieftain. For instance, where did it come from, what was it's previous history before appearing in the movie, what Mk was it and so forth.

So, what happened to the Chief after the cameras stopped rolling? Well, I came across the above picture, taken in 2009, the photographer claiming this clearly looking abandoned vehicle was the same tank from the movie, at the East of England Military Museum in Sufflok http://www.militarymuseumweb.org.uk/ looks much better now.

Then, you have Tony Borglum, a construction and heavy equipment contractor from Minnesota, who opened http://www.driveatank.com/ claiming he had the Chief from the movie. Although Larry the Tank appears to be tasked with....

....car crushing duties, the claimed tank is another Chieftain, a Mk 11 on display.....

....perhaps, the hard to see last one in this line up? 

It would be interesting to know which of these two tanks is truly the real one from the movie.