Happy Star Wars Day! A History of Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s Failed Star Wars Fan Films

 By: Andrew Bermudez

(Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Headquarters; May 4, 2024)

    It is May the 4th, Star Wars Day, and while we don't usually tackle LEGO themes that the LEGO Group produces under license, we've tried and failed to explore the Star Wars Galaxy in the past! Here are all of the attempts that we've made into this space and why they failed for one reason or another.

2002: Steven Makes Star Wars

    Our earliest attempt at a LEGO Star Wars fan film dates all the way back to the pre-formation era, back when the LEGO Studios Steven Spielberg Movie Maker set was still in use. Most of the films made in the early months of the pre-formation era amounted more to animation tests than anything else, but a few standouts, for both the right and wrong reasons, were produced during this era. Outside of memorable pre-formation films such as the Speeder trilogy, one film that snuck under the radar was Steven Makes Star Wars.

    In retrospect, the film itself was very unambitious. The premise centered around the LEGO Studios crew filming a chase scene by using the two speeders featured in the LEGO set Bounty Hunter Pursuit. The crew simply goes in, shoots the chase, then heads home for the day. What made this film stand out was the use of mounting the camera to one of the speeders to give the chase a first-person perspective. While memorable and still remembered as being one of the better pre-formation era films, it was lost in 2004 when an update to the computer's operating system made the LEGO Studios software officially obsolete.

2005-2010: Company of Clones

    Perhaps the best-recorded of all of these Star Wars-related projects would have to be this one, which was intended to be a miniseries set during the Clone Wars. The brainchild of director and executive producer Daniel Bermudez, he wanted to create a project that focused on the military side of Star Wars, and since Revenge of the Sith had just been released, the decision was made to set it during the Clone Wars. In theory, this was going to be an ambitious project with its own myth arc, a set of recurring clones, jedi, and Sith, and a venture into more obscure parts of this chapter in the Star Wars Saga.

    In practice, the project never went anywhere beyond the idea stage. For years, the project languished as just an idea sheet for the episodes and a reference sheet for designing the new characters. However, Daniel was so convinced that this miniseries was going to happen, he used the next five years to buy up LEGO Star Wars sets that he planned on using in the miniseries. Eventually, with loads of LEGO sets and no script to show for it, this project finally met the chopping block in November 2010, right at the same time that Red Jungle was also cancelled. As for the sets that were bought for this project? Well...

2024: The Force of Play

    As just about every LEGO fan knows by this point (and as anyone who has seen the latest LEGO Star Wars sets at their local store has seen), 2024 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the LEGO Star Wars product line's launch. As a part of this celebration, LEGO launched a film festival (which debuts today) of fan-created 25-second animated short films. While we had shied away from creating films based on licensed LEGO themes, we thought that this could be a great way to test some new filming techniques. There was just one problem: what should the story be? It wasn't a matter of telling a story in 25 seconds, but rather a problem of what the story should be at all.

    Meet The Force of Play, the concept for a 25-second celebratory film that explores how LEGO Star Wars has activated imaginations around the world. The film was going to center on a classic Star Wars chase or space battle (one early idea, in the spirit of Twenty Years Young, called back to Steven Makes Star Wars by having the short focus on the Bounty Hunter Pursuit set), only to then show that the entire scenario happened inside of a child's imagination. It was viewed as the perfect way to bridge together LEGO Star Wars (use of Star Wars imagery), the LEGO brand (empowering through play), and Twenty Years Young (calling back to the beginnings of the pre-formation era), at least until the project ran into the festival rules.

    The festival rules covered mostly technical elements, such as image resolution, copyright, and kid-friendly content. The proposed film met all of these requirements...until it slammed into one rule that it was at odds with: all festival entries MUST exist within the LEGO Star Wars Universe. While that does allow for some sillier scenarios, The Force of Play's explicit breaking of that universe's fourth wall was not going to work. While there had been plans to showcase this film at The Fourth Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Fan Choice Awards, the film itself ended up getting scraped before it was ever announced. On top of this, this project's cancellation also came at a time when all of the sets purchased for Company of Clones were finally sold off.

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