The Year in Review: 2023
By: Andrew Bermudez
(Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Headquarters; December 31, 2023)
As another year comes to a close, we're taking a look back over what happened this year. We were pretty quiet in the build-up to Twenty Years Young, but we did still have a substantial amount of content this past year.
January
To kick off the new year, Hunted: A (Not) Bigfoot Story was released on January 8. This tale of a hillbilly with overgrown hair and the campers who think that he's bigfoot was created for THAC 2023. While the film did not win any prizes, it did become just one of many entries in the record-breaking competition that will have you stomping with laughter. We also began an audit of the studio archives as part of a final push to finish content for Twenty Years Young, as well as geared up to plow through the projects planned for this year.
February
One of those projects, Howling Hollow: The Forest of Fear, officially debuted on February 1! This special project reimagines the setting of Forest of Fear as a fully canonical theme park land with artwork, schematics, character designs, documents, and more! The project was revealed on a rolling basis, but not as a film. To get the full scoop, just head over to the project's blog by CLICKING HERE! In the meantime, the search for and recovery of previously lost documents, images, and more continued behind the scenes.
March
March was a mostly quiet month, with most of the work done this month geared towards finishing up scouring the archives and converting .wps files to .doc files for future preservation. In fact, all of the archives were fully searched this month, including the digitization of several reels from a box that used to belong to former LEGO Studios CFO Rawlin N. Dough. The film inside, however, turned out to be...
April
April Fools! This year's joke, a previously lost film titled New Friends ~ CFO Edition, turned out to be a riff on Raul Flores' insistence that New Friends ~ An Environmental Fable would not feature any pop music. But if he's reading this, rest assured that this ten-year-old film is still a Mustache Maniacs Film Co. classic that is arguably more relevant now than when it was first released. In other news, we marked our nineteenth anniversary with a first look at the entirety of Twenty Years Young, which is our upcoming twentieth anniversary celebration coming in 2024. This celebration is expected to be so massive, we continued to tease it throughout the rest of the year, including today. For a broad look at the celebration, a full trailer was also released with a look at many of the projects debuting as a part of the celebration.
May
Not much happened in May, but plenty of work continued behind the scenes for Twenty Years Young. Most notably, post-production restoration and reimagining work for all but one of the re-releases was finished this month, along with most of the upcoming behind the scenes content.
June
While June was mostly focused on getting the re-release of Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island ready for its debut in March 2024, the one major highlight of the month was BRAWL 2023. For the competition's fifteenth year, we used this opportunity to flesh out a character that, until now, had been little more than a footnote in the cinematic universe. This led to the release of...
July
Our BRAWL 2023 entry, Bradford Rant: Beginnings, debuted on July 2. This film not only marks the first time that we used an all-AI cast for one of our films, but it also introduced Dr. Bradford Rant as a fully fleshed-out character! While the film did not win any prizes or enter into the top 20 entries, this film was still a major milestone in not only fleshing out the cinematic universe, but also in beginning to wind down Cancelled Film Revival, which will officially end next year after BRAWL 2024.
August
August was just about preparing for Twenty Years Young, including the set-up of some important software updates to help with some of the upcoming projects. At this time, the final push to complete the special edition of Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island pushed forward with tons of new AI-generated footage created. We also collected the last votes for The Fourth Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Fan Choice Awards at this time.
September
While September focused on continuing to work on Twenty Years Young, we did internally finalize the re-release for Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island, which was then sent off to Dylan Johnson to compose the film's brand-new original score. We also streamlined our behind-the-scenes workflow to make internal collaboration easier and started to wrap up the upcoming behind the scenes content.
October
While October saw the final release of the story for Howling Hollow: The Forest of Fear, which extended into November, the enormous news that came out this month is that Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo is going to have a completely overhauled re-release on August 23, 2024! Internally, we knew that we had to get the redo of this classic film right, so we tested another facet of artificial intelligence to separate the dialogue from the rest of the audio in order to replace the copywritten music with royalty-free equivalents that were just as powerful and beautiful as the prior soundtrack. At the end of the month, this overhaul was completely finished.
November
While most of its artwork will be coming next year, the story for Howling Hollow: The Forest of Fear was released in its entirety this month, with several bite-sized parts being released over the course of two weeks! This special project also saw the unveiling of new artwork depicting never-before-seen areas of the town of Howling Hollow, as well as brand-new characters and a surprise plot twist that reveals how Howling Hollow was really founded. This month also saw more internal work for Twenty Years Young, primarily for promotional material.
December
After almost a year's worth of work, the final special editions for Twenty Years Young were finally finished, with all of them now ready to go for their upcoming release dates. Whether it was the simple clean-up for Our World: Islam and Trip to LEGOLAND or the reconstructive overhauls for Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island and Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo, these special editions will fill the year with respectful tributes to our past, as well as round out our selection of content online post-celebration! In addition to this, a brand-new affiliate, Eli Hutchinson, joined our team. He's mostly known around here for winning The Film School Challenge ten years ago, but he's also currently studying film and acting. His skills will be an amazing asset to our team, and we are looking forward to working alongside him throughout Twenty Years Young and beyond.
2024: Get Ready for Twenty Years Young!
Now, we are just one day away from the start of our biggest celebration yet! Not only are we releasing new films, but we also have brand-new books, all-new music albums, re-imaginings of classic films, and so much more for the celebration! We've been counting down to this celebration throughout the year, but to give you an idea of what to expect in the new year, here are all of our scheduled releases for 2024's Twenty Years Young, organized by each month's celebratory theme!
- January: The Celebration of Two Decades (Mustache Maniacs Film Co.)
- January 1: The Legacy of Twenty Years Young
- January 7: Agent: Thorgood
- January 8: Hunted: A (Not) Bigfoot Story Deleted Animation (Behind the Scenes)
- January 16: Attack of the Fifty-Foot Hamster Deleted Animation and Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- February: Com 50 Covert Operations (Com 50 & 007)
- February 8: Com 50: Peril in Iran (Re-release)
- February 8: Com 50 & 007 (Re-release)
- February 8: Com 50: Peril in Iran Deleted Scenes and Outtakes (Behind the Scenes)
- February 8: The Inside Scoop: The Making of Com 50 & 007 (Behind the Scenes)
- March: Easter Flamingo (The Easter Egg)
- March 1: Fan Choice Awards: The Songs and Scores
- March 2: The Fourth Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Fan Choice Awards
- March 10: Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island (Re-release)
- March 10: Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island: The Inside Scoop (Behind the Scenes)
- March 10: ShootOutTakes! (Behind the Scenes)
- March 12: Without a Blacksmith Production Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- March 14: Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island: Original Soundtrack
- March 20: Mustache Maniacs Film Co.: The Music Album (Re-release)
- April: Papa Dodo's Ecosystem Observance (New Friends ~ An Environmental Fable)
- April 1: Atlanta Nights
- April 1: Mustache Maniacs Film Co. is Coming to LEGO Dimensions! Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- April 1: The Film That Changes Everything! Setting the Scene (Behind the Scenes)
- April 12: Project U-Build Play Set Adventures Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- April 16: 2-Gen Art (Re-release)
- April 17: Pharaoh's Quest: The Curse of Amset-Ra Production Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- April 18: Twenty Years Young: Songs for the Anniversary
- April 18: Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Greatest Hits
- April 18: Cancelled Projects Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- May: The Month of Thunder (Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo)
- May 3: The Bartender's Tale
- May 20: Kilroy Was Here! (Re-release)
- May 20: Kilroy Was Here! Rehearsals (Behind the Scenes)
- May 20: Kilroy Was Here! Blooper Reel (Behind the Scenes)
- May 22: Indiana Jones and the Heart of the Dragon (Re-release)
- May 22: Indiana Jones and the Heart of the Dragon Behind the Scenes (Behind the Scenes)
- May 24: Johnny Thunder and the Rise to Fame
- June: Travels Out of Time (Out of His Time)
- June 1: Mustache Maniacs Film Co.: The Visual Dictionary - 3rd Edition
- June 1: Mustache Maniacs-opoly (Re-release)
- June 1: Gone Ice Fishin' Storyboard Comparison (Behind the Scenes)
- June 1: Gone Ice Fishin' Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- June 3: An Afternoon at the Zoo Storyboard Comparison and Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- June 7: New Friends ~ An Environmental Fable Production Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- June 13: Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Leopard's Treasure (Re-release)
- June 13: Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Leopard's Treasure Deleted Scenes and Outtakes (Behind the Scenes)
- June 14: Night Guard Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- June 21: A Future in the Past
- July: Don't Say No to the U.S.O. (Kilroy Was Here!)
- July 3: Tales Across the World: A Short Story Collection
- July 3: Trip to LEGOLAND (Re-release)
- July 12: The Pen Production Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- July 14: Basking in Fields of Green
- July 27: Solarum Deleted Animation and Production Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- July 29: Indiana Jones and the Forbidden Mayan Temple (Re-release)
- July 29: Indiana Jones and the Egyptian Tomb (Re-release)
- July 29: Com 50 (Re-release)
- July 29: TBC News: The Volcano Blows (Re-release)
- July 29: Our World: Islam (Re-release)
- August: Hey, Monkey! (An Afternoon at the Zoo)
- August 1: Cooking With Flex: Recipes from Around Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s Cinematic Universe
- August 5: Ninjago: Visions of Memories Production Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- August 13: Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s Bloopers, Fun Finds, and Facts (Re-release)
- August 16: Alms Pouch: Finished At Last!
- August 17: Shady Acres Super Sleuth (Re-release)
- August 21: Alms Pouch Early Storyboard Animatic (Behind the Scenes)
- August 21: Alms Pouch Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- August 23: Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo (Re-release)
- September: Studio Shenannigans (The Film School Challenge)
- September 4: Mustache Maniacs Film Co.: The Visual Dictionary - 1st Edition (Re-release)
- September 14: Greed and Grit
- September 24: Freddy and Joey in Corn Farm Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- October: The Harrowing Howling Hollow (Howling Hollow: The Forest of Fear)
- October 1: Sam N' Bob Brawl Storyboard Comparison (Behind the Scenes)
- October 18: Van Helbrick and the Monster Fighters
- October 18: A Bite of MyJobs Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- October 18: A Bite of MyJobs Storyboard Comparison (Behind the Scenes)
- October 19: Late for the Soccer Match Interactive (Re-release)
- October 28: Indiana Jones and the Treasure of Tikal (Re-release)
- October 28: Indiana Jones and the Treasure of Tikal Deleted Scenes and Outtakes (Behind the Scenes)
- November: The Stories We've Retold (Crazy Compendium: The Early Writings of Andrew Bermudez)
- November 11: Kilroy Was Here!: The Lost Footage (Re-release)
- November 28: Speeder Production Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- November 28: Speeder Storyboard Comparison (Behind the Scenes)
- November 30: The Holy Land Paragon
- December: A Very Patrick Finale (Patrick: The Movie)
- December 9: Seeing Eye Robber Art Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- December 9: A Battle to Remember Concept Exploration: What Could Have Been (Behind the Scenes)
- December 9: A Battle to Remember Storyboard Comparison (Behind the Scenes)
- December 18: When Barrels Fly Special Effects Showcase (Behind the Scenes)
- December 19: Patrick: The Movie Production Gallery (Behind the Scenes)
- December 19: The Lost Ruby: An Interactive Adventure (Re-release)
- December 20: The Archivist
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