Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made

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It took the likes of Eli Roth, Harry Knowles and Steven Spielberg himself to make the dream of three Mississippi teenagers come true: a shot-for-shot remake of their favourite film, „Raiders of the Lost Ark”. It started in 1982 and ended only last year. "It’s amazing that Steven Spielberg needed $20 million to make „Raiders of the Lost Ark”, and my dad only had his allowance", says the son of one of three Mississippi teenagers who created in the 1980s a shot-for-shot remake of Spielberg's film. It all started as a fan project, but became a Spielberg-plot itself: about coming-of-age, friendship and family, and above all that old American Dream: anything is possible. The almost-finished project became cult fare after Eli Roth got his hands on a VHS copy in 2002 and brought it to Rotten Tomatoes founder Harry Knowles, who showed it on Butt-Numb-A-Thon, his 24-hour „geekstravaganza”. In 2014, the now-adult fans rekindled the dream to complete their remake. Apparently director Jeremy Coon and producer Scott Rudin are considering a fiction remake of this real life story, which proves that truth is always stranger than fiction.