5-25-77 update

Holy Han on Hoth, it’s been many years since we first heard about this indie 5-25-77, a love letter to the first STAR WARS. Is it finally getting ready to escape the tractor beam of development hell?

Starlog caught up with the filmmaker Patrick Read Johnson to find out the status of the semi-autobiographical project (now just going by the title ‘77, which isn’t particularly alluring). Johnson says: “Though we had two fantastic screenings at the Hamptons Film Festival and won an award (The Heineken Red Star) and got a lot of nice press, [we] needed to do some more work in the cutting room, which in turn required us to heavily revise our VFX shot list, choose some different songs from the era for certain sequences AND rework portions of the score by David Russo and Alan Parsons. Meanwhile, various members of the team were being picked off by other jobs, and the big financial meltdown was occurring, and investment dollars were suddenly very hard to come by… So we basically shut down at the end of the year to wait out the turmoil.“

His plan is now to bring it to the American Film Market in November to seek distribution… which unfortunately means there’s no definitive time frame on when we might see it. Read Starlog’s lengthy piece and interview RIGHT HERE.

The movie features toothy “Freaks & Geeks” star John Francis Daley as an aspiring filmmaker in the mid-1970s, considered a local outcast for his sci-fi obsession and passion for movies. Good thing society’s over that stigma! Kinda. Anyway, it looks like a retro blast of bad hair and love for practical effects, a special treat for those of us who spent their formative years infatuated with the STAR WARS movies (the good, midichlorian-free ones). You can check out the trailer below.