Regular FCT readers may recall a fairly big-budget fan production I wrote about back in June, The Amazing Adventures of Little Batman. The flick launched last year on YouTube and has since become an online phenomenon, seen by more than 65,000 people. Now Jordan H. Wachtell, the fan film’s producer—not to mention the Dad of the film’s star, six-year-old Preston—reports that a new film is in the works, where the young actor will take on the role of a certain world-famous, death-defying archeologist created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
“I just finished filming Little Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Magic Scrolls,” he reports. “That should be out by Christmas 2008. It’s bigger and even more ambitious than Little Batman and yes, I am tired!” When you consider that his diminutive Dark Knight movie took two years of planning, one can only imagine what that means.
While he clearly had fun working with his son on the films, Wachtell created the films with director Joe Valenti for a variety of reasons: “My idea was to inspire little kids—ages 4-8—by making them the stars, so they could relate better to being a real hero. For Little Batman, we based our story on the old 1966 Batman TV series version, my personal favorite. All the details are spot-on to the show and we built the only real working mini-Batmobile in the world; it has real working parachutes, smoke, goes 30 MPH, shoots confetti rockets out of two tubes, has a working bat beam with laser beam, bat computer, iPod, and more! Other props we made include a 14-foot Penguin Missile, a mini version of the batshield, a mini Batgirl motorcyle (also the only one in the world) and more.”
Wachtell currently has a DVD of the fan film in production as well a comic book of it—an idea that on the surface might not go over that well with the character’s copyright owners: DC Comics and Warner Brothers. Wachtell, however, envisions them as freebies, to be given away not to promote the movie but its values: “My goal is to donate the props to a kids museum, to set up a traveling exhibit [where the movie is screened]. A museum can then sponsor the DVD and comic books to be given out to thousands of kids around the country. Our movie contains a good and powerful message for all kids.”
While Little Indiana Jones inches towards completion, its forerunner has been playing in film festivals around the country, reportedly getting top spots everywhere, along with standing ovations. If you haven’t see the flick, here’s all three segments, and as always, feel free to share your opinions in the comments section below.
The Amazing Adventures of Little Batman, Part 1
The Amazing Adventures of Little Batman, Part 2
The Amazing Adventures of Little Batman, Part 3
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