King Kong is a classic movie, but (Spoiler alert for maybe three people on the planet) the problem is that the monkey dies at the end. That never stopped Hollywood from making lots of cheesy sequels, but if you’re a die-hard fan who’s respectful of the original 1933 flick, how do you make a King Kong fan film? You pull a George Lucas and do a prequel—and that’s just what Eric Kessler has been doing.
Aiming to ape the work of classic stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien, the budding stop-motion animator has been working away for two years on Skull Island, which features Kong battling giant vultures, raptors, a T. Rex, a Deinosuchus, a Spinosaurus and more. Garage Kit sculptor Chuck Yagher produced the King Kong and T Rex animation models Kessler uses in his film. If you dig the teaser below, Kessler has from the work-in-progress on YouTube to enjoy.
[via Constant Monster]
Transformers have been around for 25 years, and they’ve had a fan film link from the very start. Not only have zillions of kids tried their hand at stop-motion animation using their Transformer robots, but Don Glut, one of the pioneer fan filmmakers of the 1950s and 60s who was profiled in my fan film book, 
Last week, Fan Cinema Today covered some 
If you love fan films or Indiana Jones, you have not lived until you’ve seen Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation—the legendary fan film made by three teens over the course of seven years. From start to end, they recreate just about everything from the original, from the truck chase to the boulder to the opening of the Ark at the end. It’s plain astonishing—and a heck of a lot of fun. How cool is it? Let’s put it this way: Steven Spielberg is a fan of their movie.
While the majority of fan films covered by FCT are made in the United States, it’s important to remember that this past-time is an international hobby. We’ve covered flicks from 
Last summer, I 
Last summer, fan filmmaker Sacha Feiner’s Gremlins flick—where the nasty little guys from the Eighties horror/comedy movies take over your DVR—was the buzz of the internet. Millions enjoyed watching Feiner’s update to the “broken film” scene in Gremlins 2, as his carefully made monsters invade classic scenes from other movies like The Exorcist, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Batman.