The Year In Review: 2020
By: Andrew Bermudez
(Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Headquarters; December 28, 2020)
Well, none can deny that this was one wild and rough year (not even The Undeniable Neighbor from The Citizen of the Year), and while there was much strife, we also were able to use this time to re-evaluate ourselves and look to the future. In addition, while the lock-downs slowed down some of our projects, it also put us in a place to re-establish our presence online and help us to rebuild our audience after losing it from 2017 to 2019. While we can't cover everything that happened, here's all of the highlights from this year.
January
We started the year, not knowing what was going to happen, with a retrospective of our first full calendar decade of existence! We started by quickly covering the release of Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile in 2010 and the slew of releases between then and 2013, including the legendary New Friends ~ An Environmental Fable, then transitioned into Ten Years of Going Crazy!, then into Project U! We were fully willing to admit our internal problems between 2016 and 2019, which saw a decrease in content, and finished off with the changes that we started to put into place to increase productivity and morale, something that characterizes some of the moves that we made this year. We continued to work on internal projects at this time, but also made some tweaks to our online network to comply with YouTube's new COPPA rules.
February
We quickly finished the overhaul of our website this month, which brought a more seamless navigation experience to the website's visitors. This included adjusting page layouts for legibility, rearranging buttons to make browsing user-friendly, and adding suggested titles to each page to increase the amount of time spent on the website. This month was also spent working on more technical things, such as updating our classic and gold logos for our recent productions.
March
This was the month where an assumed-uneventful year went off-course. On March 13, LEGO Studios was temporarily closed to guests in response to COVID-19, then shuttered all non-essential functions on March 28, including film production. However, just before this shut-down went into full effect, Pharaoh's Quest: The Curse of Amset-Ra finished principal photography on March 21, after almost four years! After a new home-based work flow was put into place, The Easter Egg was announced to be released on April 10. Film editing also began remotely for on-going projects.
April
Surprisingly, April saw the arrival of not one or two films, but THREE NEW FILMS! The first of these, Rap-Trick, turned out to be a benign April Fool's Day joke, but April 10 saw the release of The Easter Egg as part of the contest EASTER 2020. In addition, after nine years in development, Pharaoh's Quest: The Curse of Amset-Ra debuted on April 17, 2020 to rave reviews. The historical fiction film attracted audiences like never before, setting off one of our strongest opening weekends in our sixteen-year history! The film, buoyed by a then-renewed nostalgia for LEGO's Pharaoh's Quest theme, in turn helped push our content to new audiences, perhaps beginning to build an all-new circle of dedicated fans who will end up growing up with films like Ocean of Fear and The Pen. However, at this time, there was talk of how to react to a downturn in income caused by COVID-19 by cutting some loose threads. All of the shows that were still on-going were cancelled and the future of Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo: The Adventure Retold was put into question. However, this project survived the chopping block and is still on-track to begin production next year. Sadly, Curt Freeman, who played the clapper loader in the original cut of A Very Patrick Christmas, passed away late into the month.
May
Speaking of Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo, it came to our attention in May that, contrary to popular belief, that film never was the longest brickfilm of all time. That honor goes to The Wars of Darkness, which has a runtime of 245 minutes that Mark Matthew has vowed to beat with Legends of the Universe. Meanwhile, another new film, How To Build a Log Cabin, was released on May 22 with a small crew producing the film. If nothing else, this short and funny film finally satisfied everyone who supported the bear builds a log cabin idea from The Kingfisher's development. A week later, the special edition of The Adventures of Legoman was released and Alms Pouch: Finished At Last! was announced to be a full remake.
June
In June, we surprised fans with yet another film, Johnny Thunder and the Trail of Botnik! This film surprised us even more by just barely out-performing Pharaoh's Quest: The Curse of Amset-Ra! This BRAWL 2020 Entry was praised for keeping the spirit of the feature-length Johnny Thunder films in a far shorter running time. This response has led to some speculation that more short adventures like this one could be released in due time. Along with this film, we also introduced our finalized statement on our commitment to equality that was in direct response to the events that occurred at the end of May.
July
July began with the beginning of the end for both DINO ATTACK: Saga of a Conflict, which concluded in December, and Crazyhouse Comics, which officially closes up shop on January 1, 2021. The comics saw a new page released this month, among other production shuffles. However, eight years of special editions came to an end this month with the special edition of Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile, released to-the-day on the film's tenth anniversary (July 16, 2020). Also this month, it had been confirmed that several of our cancelled films were up for consideration to be produced. While this project has long past, we will announce the films being revived on February 1, 2021.
August
Promises to celebrate LEGO Universe's tenth anniversary in a big way fell apart before leaving the station when massive software issues halted nearly every project in development. These issues were eventually fixed four months later, but this caused anything beyond a teaser for Legends of the Universe to be cancelled for October 26, 2020. However, this month did see the announcement of a new story team that would be created to help write future Mustache Maniacs Film Co. productions.
September
Work persisted, as did the software issues that forced Alms Pouch: Finished At Last! to be delayed to 2021. In general, this month was filled with uncertainty, but with changes in development. John Hitchcock was brought aboard as the very first member of our newly-formed story team, with the said story team beginning work on October 1, 2020.
October
With a story team in place and a new contest, Septemberfest 2020, happening on Bricks in Motion, John Hitchcock's first assignment was to write an entry for the contest. This entry, titled The Employee of the Month, debuted on October 30, but not before encountering its own problems. Software issues, technical glitches, and a wildfire continuously put the film in jeopardy, but preparedness and diligence paid off, with the film debuting on schedule and receiving praise for its narrative and message. Also debuting this month was a de-fictionalization of the book Cities That You MUST Absolutely, Positively, Stay Out Of to Avoid Being Eaten Alive!!!, a travel guide parody that was first mentioned in the film Attack of the Fifty-Foot Hamster, and is based on the film Forest of Fear.
November
This month was mostly work, mainly to complete Patrick: The Movie, but this month did see all of the software issues get resolved, returning everything to full functionality. This fast-tracked Patrick: The Movie, which had since been announced for a December 25, 2020 release. In preparation for this debut, Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s staff worked around the clock to get all of the needed voice actors cast, the rest of the film shot, and editing to formally begin, which lasted into the first week of December. However, on a more tragic note, Martha Bermudez, who played the curator in Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile, passed away on November 17.
December
After racing to get the film completed for its debut, Patrick: The Movie debuted on Christmas Day as our way to send off the year. After all, with this being such a tough year, what better way to send it off than with such a wild and silly film for one last laugh? Also debuting on Christmas Day were the last two pages for DINO ATTACK: Saga of a Conflict. After massive simplification, we've turned these comics into an introduction to BZPower's smash-hit RPG, with directions to continue reading the RPG for yourself. As part of this release, PeabodySam (the main writer for the RPG) re-released the RPG back in July as a director's cut that better aligns the story's events with the official cinematic universe, such as referring to the RPG's main reality as Dimension 525. The film and comics were both immediate hits, sending off the year in a strong fashion.
Looking Ahead: Early 2021
We're getting ready for next year, and we're excited to inform you all about us entering THAC XVIII, which will begin on January 9, 2021! We can't say what we have planned, but since our last attempt at entering THAC resulted in us creating a film that was too ambitious (The Bartender's Tale) and therefore had to be cancelled, we're going to gauge this productivity and see how we can streamline our process. This will be the first step that we take in changing our workflow, which will result in new projects, which are covered in the next section.
New Legends Will Be Revealed on 2/1/21!
Now, we have been working on new content, but we aren't ready to announce it yet. With the arrival of a vaccine that will finally end this pandemic, we're looking to the future to come back stronger than before! Going forward, we don't expect to have the output that we've had this year (we attribute this to the lock-down), but we are looking at completing Project U in a timely manner while telling plenty of side stories. The success of Johnny Thunder and the Trail of Botnik has caused us to re-evaluate how we produce our films, as well as how to introduce or revive characters for our audience.
All of this will come to a head on February 1, 2021 (or 2/1/21, as we're calling it), when we will announce an entire line-up of brand-new content! We're done drafting what this announcement will entail, so here's a run-down of what you can expect.
- Plans to complete Project U in a timely manner, along with the remakes of Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo and Alms Pouch.
- Our twentieth anniversary celebration schedule.
- Brand-new film concepts.
- The results of Cancelled Film Revival, as well as other projects.
- What our next visual dictionary will contain.
- Our THAC and BRAWL plans going forward.
Lead Out
What else can be said than that this year could have -and should have - been a LOT better? However, despite all of the local, internal, and global problems that plagued us, we persisted with an output that we never thought would have been possible back in January of this year. Thank you for being with us during these hard times, and we wish you all a Happy (and better) New Year. We will see you in 2021!
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