The Story of the Johnny Thunder Saga: Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s Most Popular Franchise

 By: Andrew Bermudez

(Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Headquarters; May 18, 2024)

    Today is International Museum Day, so we're going all in today like Dr. Kilroy and creating our own exhibit of the history of the Johnny Thunder Saga, our own franchise adapting the LEGO Adventurers theme! Here's a brief history of that franchise and where it's going today.

2002-2004 - Before the Saga: The Canceled and Lost Johnny Thunder Films

    Ever since the early days of the pre-formation era, attempts at creating a LEGO Adventurers-based film were actually fairly commonplace. Some of these used the LEGO Studios Steven Spielberg Movie Maker Set, while others were intended to use more sophisticated software. However, all of these titles were either lost or were canceled during their development. Below is a list of these Johnny Thunder-based films and what they were about, as well as what happened to them.

• Temple Escape Trilogy - Oh, boy. Should we even begin with the most infamous films of ours from the pre-formation era? This trilogy of films from 2002 featured Johnny Thunder escaping a collapsing temple with a ruby. What made these films so infamous, however, was the fact that most of the film was spent watching rocks fall, making what should have been an action-packed trilogy extremely boring. The second film saw Johnny finally escape the temple, while the third film saw him escape the region as an earthquake causes the ground to collapse. Needless to say, no one shed any tears when these films were lost in 2004.
• Johnny Thunder and the African Adventure - In a more unconventional twist on the character of Johnny Thunder, this film saw him, Pippin, and Dr. Kilroy go to sub-Saharan Africa to film an animal documentary. However, Lord Sam Sinister and Mr. Cunningham are soon after the film crew, as they're more interested in poaching the animals. Produced in 2003, this film is remembered for being amongst the best of the pre-formation era films. While this film was lost to time in 2004, the idea to possibly remake this film (a la Speeder) has circulated for some time, but nothing has come of this thus far.
• Orient Expedition: The Movie - In the pre-formation era, there was one old attempt at adapting the LEGO Orient Expedition sets. Simply titled as Orient Expedition: The Movie, this film was produced as a three-part trilogy (mainly due to the technological limitations of the LEGO Studios Steven Spielberg Movie Maker Set) and stayed fairly faithful to the online comics. One thing that set this film apart, however, was how archaic the sets were. If it wasn't one of the LEGO sets, it was just some boxes and recycled cardboard for the film sets. While this film was also lost in 2004, this did sow the seeds for what was to come five years later.
• Johnny Thunder and the Ark of Ararat - Best known for being the first Johnny Thunder film to be written after the establishment of Mustache Maniacs Film Co. (though it was never released), Johnny Thunder and the Ark of Ararat sent Johnny Thunder on an adventure to Türkiye to locate Noah's Ark. In a bizarre attempt to subvert the theme's core even further, this film was a crossover with The Cooper Kids Adventure Series books. It borrows heavily from the sixth book in the series, The Deadly Curse of Toco-Rey, by including the characters and the poisonous carvies, fictional flying slugs from that book. This script also features a surprising downer ending (one of the secondary characters dies and no one gets the treasure), but it also features what is regarded as some of the worst writing of any Mustache Maniacs Film Co. project. Perhaps it's best that all that exists of this project is the shooting script and a teaser, but if this also convinced you to spend $70 for eight books, you can buy the entire Cooper Kids series here (this is not a paid sponsorship, we promise): Cooper Kids Adventures Series Set of 8 Volumes Include Door in the Dragon's Throat, Escape From the Island of Aquarius, Tombs of Anak, Trapped At the Bottom of the Sea, Secret of Desert Stone, Deadly Curse of Toco-rey, and more: Frank Peretti: 0763461634404: Amazon.com: Books
• Johnny Thunder and the Curse of the Mummy - An adaptation of two short stories by Daniel and Andrew Bermudez, Johnny Thunder and the Curse of the Mummy was a fairly simplistic retelling of the 1998 LEGO Adventurers sets, just with the extra goofiness of the stories thrown in. The film covers the Adventurers and Villains racing against each other to find the jewel Re-Gou, but this film ended up being canceled for one main reason: the Cornerstone Thespian Society. Kilroy Was Here! pulled resources away from this project, which was also hampered by the lack of technology at the time to properly animate the film. On top of this, as the film's script was expanded, it started to read less like a movie and more like a video game, which did not do the film's action any favors. Thus, a true Johnny Thunder film wouldn't come along from us, at least until...

2008 - Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo: A Passion Project Turned Franchise Launchpad

    To say that Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo was a hit would be a massive understatement. The film propelled us onto the global stage and completely changed Mustache Maniacs Film Co. forever. This film is the main reason that live action films were phased out completely from our lineup of projects (minus a few one-off films here and there) and shifted our output to animation. But how did this film get here? It was actually the brainchild of Daniel Bermudez, who was a huge fan of the LEGO Orient Expedition sets and had sought out ways to adapt the story for animation (the lost film Orient Expedition: The Movie was also his idea). In tackling the film, he wanted to go big with the story, which meant adding in material not present in the original story. This led to the addition of Block Sauniere, the civil war sub-plot, and many of the film's additional characters. For Mustache Maniacs Film Co., this was a film produced on a scale never seen before.

    In true Mustache Maniacs Film Co. fashion, this film started out faithfully retelling the story before changing things up, primarily the time period. The original story was set anywhere between 1927 and 1935 (no piece of media was able to set this in stone), but Daniel wanted to shift the time period, so the story now takes place in 2008, the year that the film was released. On top of this, the original "Horn of Africa" prologue from the online comics was initially going to be in the film by way of using an actual Beninese myth of the Wututu Bird to explain the treasure. However, as this opening killed the tension that later plot twists would bring, alongside the desire to make the film more of a mystery-adventure film, that opening was scrapped altogether and replaced with the murder of Block Sauniere. Throughout the twists and turns that this film's writing process brought, a few other elements were also chopped out for either their absurdity or pointlessness, including:

• Really, the entire opening is completely different. Originally, instead of renovating the Da Vinci Gallery, the Adventurers were going to go home for some rest when Digalot informs them that Dr. Kilroy, who is in Venice, has invited the Adventurers to the opening of Marco Polo's House Museum. They then leave for Venice to leave Digalot to cover Johnny's keynote lecture. Just like the prologue, this was all scrapped when the murder was added to the film.
• Jokes about Harry Cane being very materialistic and greedy were peppered throughout the original script, partially inspired by the character of Jonathon from The Mummy Trilogy. Also, in the early script were jokes about Patrick Hooligans looking for the Golden Eyeball. None of this is in the final film.
• Because the murder wasn't in the original script, the villains were instead going to find out about the Golden Dragon by raiding Marco Polo's House.
• The entire Maharajah Lallu and sunstone subplot from the online comics was cut, as this more or less repeated many of the plot beats from the invented civil war subplot. The character was replaced with a trio of thieves.
• The Elephant Caravan chase was also cut, as Daniel Bermudez has said that that was the one part of the comics that he did NOT like. The film has the elephants travel through the jungle to the ruins, where Lord Sinister has already arrived.
• A joke about Patrick discovering a pile of elephant manure was going to be featured in the original version of the introduction of Babloo. The final version of this scene only mentions the villains instead of showing them.
• The Obliterator, which was either a rip-off or a parody of The Terminator (the existing documents don't say one way or another), was going to be a robot that allies with Lord Sam Sinister in India. It was cut for being just idiotic.
• During the trip from Xi'an to the Dragon Fortress, a proposed scene was going to be a cable car fight with swarming rebel planes. The Adventurers were going to get on a cable car and ride it to the Dragon Fortress while fending off planes (just like in the videogame Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb) In fact, this scene lasted so far into development, concept art exists of the sequence. However, the scene followed up on the action-heavy Battle of Xi'an sequence, which made this scene an action overload that did literally nothing to advance the plot. Instead, the Adventurers take a rowboat to the Dragon Fortress, just like in the comics.
• On a similar note, concept art exists for dragon pillars that took inspiration from their description from the book The Travels of Marco Polo. However, they have no designated use labeled on the artwork and do not appear in the final film.

Regardless, the film was an instant hit worldwide and at 99 minutes also had the distinction of being Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s longest film at release (our claims at the time that it was the longest brickfilm of all time, however, were incorrect), a record that would be beaten a year later by From Sea to Shining Sea at 2 hours (which has yet to be broken). Even though the film is over a decade and a half old, it is still beloved and cherished by the fanbase, as this film literally gave birth to that fanbase. This was the reason for us deciding to create a special edition of this film, which will be out later this year on August 23. Just as importantly, this film made everything else mentioned here in this article possible. YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

2009 - A Very Patrick Christmas: A Festive Spin-Off

    One breakout character from Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo was that of Patrick Hooligans, Lord Sam Sinister's idiot henchman. Immediately after that film's release, there was immense demand for more Patrick, so we worked out ways to deliver more of the character ahead of the next Johnny Thunder film. The first project that was proposed, a comic strip titled Patrick's Adventures, died early in development, but one idea that did stick was a Christmas special. This special, titled A Very Patrick Christmas, acted as a commercial for Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile in its earliest drafts, but after the film with Patrick was inserted, the focus of the film began to shift dramatically. The newscast lost significant screentime to the film as it became less about the ad and more about Christmas. Finally sealing the deal nine years later, this film's re-release completely scrapped the newscast altogether, the sole reason that this film even exists. YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

2010 - Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile and Wonders of Buoyancy: The First Sequel in the Saga and the Seeds of the Cinematic Universe

    Back in the main Johnny Thunder Trilogy, a sequel was practically green lit moments after the debut of Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo, but where to set it? The fan site adventurers.dk ran a poll in 2008 to see which Adventures subtheme was the favorite amongst the theme's fanbase. By an overwhelming majority, the answer was Egypt, the original subtheme, so plans were made internally to write a film set in Egypt while also changing things up to account for the story changes made in the previous film. The gem Re-Gou became the Heart of Osiris, initially an ancient superweapon before becoming a magical healing gem, and the time period change meant that parts of modern Egypt would also be incorporated. Since the previous film did feature several cultural and geographic inaccuracies, more research than ever was put into writing this film, which features models depicting modern and ancient Egypt as accurately as possible. Throughout its development, the script stayed fairly the same, with only two scenes being eliminated from the film.

• Originally, Johnny Thunder was going to fight a Boxer at Cairo Tower after the bus chase, which was how he was going to find out that Lord Sinister knows about the Heart of Osiris. However, just like the cable car chase in the previous film, this scene followed up action with more action, when breathing room was what was needed. In the final film, a clumsy henchman fills this role.
• The other cut scene, which was outlined but never written out in the script, was a monster attack on the Nile River. Details on what this encounter was supposed to look like are few and far between, but the idea sheet does list that the Adventurers were going to encounter "monsters of myth," taking a cue from Tygurah, the Yeti, and Jun-Chi.

    In truth, the only part of the film that saw massive changes over time was the title. Originally, when this film was going to mirror the later film Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients (see below for more on that), this film was going to be titled Johnny Thunder and the Keys to Power. When the superweapon/arms race/Hidden Mysteries plot was dropped in favor of a more straightforward adventure, the title became Johnny Thunder and the Jewel of the Nile (all of the film's concept art uses this title). However, in an effort to avoid confusion with the film The Jewel of the Nile, this film, on the day before its announcement in 2009, changed its name to Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile, the name it has today. Just like the first film, it was a huge hit with audiences everywhere. YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

    Later that same year, a film titled Wonders of Buoyancy hit the internet in the first of what would become a long string of animated school assignments. The film itself was ambitious for being a science experiment elevated to an animated film, but it did something even bigger than that. The film was released as an adaptation of the LEGO Atlantis sets, but immediately, in the then recently started comics Tales of the Adventurers, a comic was featured that followed up on the film's plot and had the characters interact with Prof. James Digalot. In less than a month, an initially unrelated film was pulled into the Johnny Thunder Saga, thus foreshadowing the creation of the cinematic universe in 2013, where nearly every production would be pulled into one timeline. YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

2011-2013 - Tales of the Adventurers: No Longer Just Movies

    By the time Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile had been released, everyone knew that it was going to take a long time to develop what would eventually become Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients. In that case, in order to fill the time that would lapse in between the two installments, another surprise adventure was produced, but not as a film. Using the general ideas behind Patrick's Adventures, Tales of the Adventurers was Mustache Maniacs Film Co.'s first-ever comic series, which started with its own epilogue for Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile, then went off and proceeded to tell the story of an all-new original adventure that crossed over the LEGO Adventurers characters with those from LEGO Atlantis. The story sent the Adventurers to the Bahamas to locate pirate gold hidden by the trickster pirate Captain Ironhook, where the new comic format allowed for a new direction in telling the story. Interactive challenges were woven throughout the comics that affected the story, and action sequences were given new context in an adventure that leaned more on humor and puzzles.

    What also happened in these comics was the introduction of characters that would then be retroactively featured in the animated films. The beginning of the comics acted as the introduction of John "Six Shots" Parker before also introducing characters like Steven Sever and Captain Valdimir Sugar (both of whom would then appear in Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients) as well as Captain Ace Speedman, Dr. Jeff Fisher, and Charlie Flagton (they will all appear in Johnny Thunder and the Rise to Fame and Johnny Thunder and the Wonders Beneath the Waves). These comics also set up the relationship between Sarah Thunder and Lance Spears, introduced new character dynamics, and generally shifted the tone of the Johnny Thunder Saga between the second and third films in the series. While the comics were originally going to conclude in the summer of 2014 to fill the gap between this original adventure and the third Johnny Thunder film, this ended up not happening, with the comics ending in December 2013. YOU CAN READ IT HERE.

2011 - The Lost Ruby: An Interactive Adventure: The Adventure Gamified

    In the meantime, near the end of 2011, another original adventure took shape, but not like any other in the past. You see, back in 2010, when YouTube introduced annotations, this opened up an entire world of interactivity on the video platform. The initial idea for tackling this new innovation was a little game titled Hieroglyphs Quest, which was going to have a simultaneous release online and on the DVD for Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile at the end of 2010. This game would have the players navigate a newly discovered tomb to find a powerful artifact, but in order to solve the riddles and avoid the traps, the player was going to have to translate real hieroglyphs. The ending would have teleported the player to a cavern full of teasers for Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients, including an art gallery, a video clip, and more. All of the assets were constructed and ready to go in the fall of 2010, but the DVD failed to work properly. Worse, translating the hieroglyphs slowed the game's pace to a crawl. By the end of the year, this project had been cancelled.

    However, since the assets already existed, this film saw another lifeline a year later. Tales of the Adventurers had proven to be a hit, and with the busy year 2011 coming to a close, talks started of revisiting this project. All of the assets already existed, so it was just a matter of reprogramming them for a simplified game to send off the year. That revised project, The Lost Ruby: An Interactive Adventure, changed the story and streamlined the gameplay. You, a museum intern, are now accompanying Johnny Thunder on a quest to explore an Egyptian tomb recently discovered by Hiram Aziz, which is rumored to house the jewel Re-Gou inside. This gem, created by Amset-Ra's rivals as a decoy for the Heart of Osiris, is still nevertheless a priceless artifact hidden deep in the tomb of Amset-Ra's arch enemy Pharaoh Hotep. You must navigate the tomb and dodge the traps and solve the riddles to find the treasure. The game was released to great acclaim in how it diversified the Johnny Thunder Saga, but on January 15, 2019, YouTube Annotations were discontinued due to abuse. This rendered the game unplayable, but a fix is coming on December 19 in the form of a special edition. This version will restore and reimagine the game to make it fully playable again, including two brand-new levels: The Museum and The Caravan!

2014 - Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients: The Trek Across Multiple Script Changes and the Film that Resulted

    Bear with us, because this is going to be a long one. The first version of what would become Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients was written as far back as 2008. That version would have essentially been the second film in the Johnny Thunder Saga (which means that this film almost took place in Egypt), with various factions of explorers looking for the unknowable "Hidden Mysteries." That version, titled Johnny Thunder and the Keys to Power, never went beyond the initial idea and was shelved. Another version, titled Johnny Thunder and the Forgotten World, would have combined the plot with the LEGO Adventurers Dino Island subtheme, but that version was quickly scrapped for having the Hidden Mysteries and the dinosaurs competing for the film's attention. Eventually, what was settled upon was a world tour scenario that borrowed elements of the LEGO Adventurers Amazon subtheme.

    Even then, the film underwent the most rewrites of any film in the Johnny Thunder Saga. To give some perspective on how much this film was changed, here is a list of every single scene that was cut from this film, compiled for the first time as a complete list.

• Murdered Security Guard and the Book Signing: Originally, this film was going to begin with a security guard being murdered (just like with Block Sauniere), then transition to a book signing with Dan Brown. This scene is the first time that Sarah Thunder and Lance Spears were ever paired up as a couple (Tales of the Adventurers would confirm this publicly in 2012) and plays out just like the opening of Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo, with Johnny investigating the murder, which sends him off on his globe-trotting journey. However, it was those similarities that doomed this scene, especially at a time when the producers wanted to do something different. In the final film, this was all replaced with the prologue, Spain, and L'Anse Aux Meadows.
• The Psychic's Girlfriend: Originally, Steven Sever was going to be accompanied by a girlfriend named Gertrude Daiman, who was on the run with him. She would have followed alongside Steven to add some romance to the film, but her presence did nothing to advance the plot along. She was chopped out of the film early in the writing stage, but her name would later be reused (and respelled) for a character in Johnny Thunder and the Trail of Botnik.
• A Texas Dinner: After Steven Sever psychically killed Dove's oldest goat, the villains were going to gather for a dinner of goat stew, which would have been the on-screen appearance of the cut character Alfred Parker. At this point in the film would have been when Lord Sam Sinister would have read about Johnny Thunder in the newspaper, convinced Steven to go with them, and ordered Captain Sugar to gather the troops, which would have resulted in a comical scene of mercenaries marching around the dinner table. However, the producers hated this scene, causing it to be cut out and its important bits to be strewn throughout the rest of the Riding Crop Ranch sequence.
• Zimbabwe Truck Chase: In the original version of the film's Zimbabwe sequence, Johnny Thunder and the Adventurers were going to be chased by Lord Sinister's men in trucks while racing towards Great Zimbabwe. The scene was deemed extremely pointless, since it rehashed many other sequences in the film and didn't advance the plot in any way. Instead, the sequence was moved to after Great Zimbabwe and swapped out the trucks for a train, which had been carried over from...
• Grand Canyon: Before Romania was in the film, the Adventurers were going to go to Grand Canyon National Park to find the red portal key. The sequence was going to start with the group going on tour with a character named Park Ranger Tim, who would guide them the cave. At the cave, a killer jackalope would have killed Tim, but would have then been destroyed by Harry. After recovering the portal key, the group would have then traveled back to their hotel on the Grand Canyon Railroad. From there, the villains minus Patrick (his steed, a stubborn mule, refuses to do anything but throw him off) raid the train but are driven off. However, Lance has to stop the runaway train as it returns to Williams, Arizona. This entire sequence was deemed too silly, so most of its ideas were then either handed off to the Zimbabwe scene or the newly written Romania scene.
• Mexico City: In this sequence, the Adventurers would have discovered that the green portal key was hidden in the sewers beneath Mexico City. In order to find it, they break into the basement of a local McDonald's and break through the wall, finding ancient Aztec ruins. After they find the key, there would have been an escape sequence through the surrounding jungle. However, like the above sequence, this was also deemed too silly. Yet, it only took some minor adjustments to change this sequence into the one that replaced it, Machu Picchu.
• Tokyo: Just like the Australia sequence that replaced it, this was basically the same sequence, but cosmetically changed to taking place in Tokyo and out in the bay. The order of events was otherwise going to be identical. Why the change from Japan to Australia was made was for one simple reason: the locale was deemed too similar to Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo, so someplace that didn't look similar to China had to be chosen instead.
• Apotheosis Battle: While in the final film, Dr. Jim Carew gets assimilated into the Hidden Mysteries for showing his selfish greed, the original version of this scene was going to be more action-packed and... weird. Originally, Dr. Jim Carew was going to open the portal to start the Ceremony of Apotheosis, which would then end in him killing himself. Drawing power from the portal, Jim would then come back to life and resurrect every past dead Johnny Thunder Saga character from the first two films (that montage was actually filmed and is featured in the film's deleted scenes reel). Pursuing Jim through the portal, the Adventurers and their newly found allies in Lord Sinister's Gang would then travel through surrealistic versions of the locations from the first two films, including the Scorpion Village, Temple of Mt. Everest, Coughing Dragon Opera House, Dragon Fortress, Nile River, Abu Simbel, and more while battling Dr. Jim Carew, who has been transformed into an Illuminati monster (concept art exists of this creature, which is featured in the film's art gallery). Eventually, Jim is defeated by being overloaded with his own power, causing him to then die and be assimilated into the Hidden Mysteries. Ultimately, this ending was seen as problematic for many reasons. Firstly, it was going to take too long to animate (the August release date had been settled by this time and this sequence was cut out that May), and secondly, it was too confusing and chaotic. Finally, due to the demand that William "Billy the Kid" Parker return even though he was dead, a solution was reached to use the Hidden Mysteries, but would only work if this sequence was completely scrapped. In the final film, the Hidden Mysteries work against Dr. Jim Carew and bring Billy the Kid back to life, thus keeping all of the action in one location.
• The Treasure Twist: Originally, this film's treasure was going to be even more mundane than the "Sentient Force of Love and Charity" that's in the final film. Originally, the treasure was going to be...the religious texts of the world. This would have then led to a signature Dr. Kilroy lecture about what they all have in common and about how the Hidden Mysteries actually worked. Essentially, it amounted to the idea that you can change the world if you just believe hard enough. And not in a social sense, but literally altering the fabric of reality by just concentrating really hard. In this version, Lord Sam Sinister was also going to call a truce, thus ending his rivalry with Johnny Thunder. Unsurprisingly, this ending was deemed too ridiculous, boring, and eliminated the possibility of more sequels. It was rewritten into the final sequence of the film as it stands now.
• Sarah and Lance's Wedding: Your eyes are not deceiving you. Ten years before Johnny Thunder and the Rise to Fame actually did it, this film was originally going to end with Sarah Thunder and Lance Spears getting married. This was actually one of the last scenes to get chopped out, but it was for one very specific reason: the producers thought that the scene was too sappy. This was at a time when this film was going to be the capstone of the Johnny Thunder Saga, so the idea of them getting married (paired with the original truce described above) also seemed to tie everything up too nicely (read that as no more sequels), so the film now ends with some final words from Lord Sam Sinister and his henchmen.

    Eventually, the film was released in 2014 as a part of the Ten Years of Going Crazy! Celebration to great acclaim. The film arrived with a bang, with a full premiere with the cast and crew, an online release party, and so much more. While this did end the Johnny Thunder Trilogy, we still had so much more in store for fans of our version of Johnny Thunder. YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

2016 - Journey to Siberia: The Untold Chapter is Finally Told

    At this point, the Johnny Thunder Trilogy had come to a close and the plans for future films in the saga were mostly intermixed with the then-recently announced Project U. However, since 2008, there has been one story that everyone had been wanting to tell: where Lord Sam Sinister, Patrick Hooligans, and Horatio Schmidt were in between Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo and A Very Patrick Christmas. It wasn't enough of a story to warrant its own film, but in 2016, it did become the basis of a series of comics titled Journey to Siberia. Originally, the comics were going to continue and also bridge the gap between A Very Patrick Christmas and Johnny Thunder and the Gift of the Nile, but these plans never amounted to anything. The end result is a comedy comic series all about travel, escape, and reunion. YOU CAN READ IT HERE.

2018 - Crazy Compendium: The Narrative Expands and a Johnny Thunder Variant Revealed

    On the other hand, with the release of the book Crazy Compendium: The Early Writings of Andrew Bermudez, the main storyline of the saga returned to its roots with a classic adventure and more development for the characters. While this book is not officially recognized as part of the Johnny Thunder Saga, it does contain two stories that are. Like Journey to Siberia, one of these stories, Sarah's Childhood Adventures: The Easter Egg Hunt, explored the past of Sarah Thunder when she was still a child. This short story was rewritten from The Big Easter Egg Hunt, which was originally written in 2002. Alongside that story, another one titled Artifact Theft was rewritten as another adventure titled Johnny Thunder and the Winter Vessel. Just like Tales of the Adventurers, the shift in medium meant that the story needed to prioritize different aspects compared to, say, an animated film. Action could only be described, so action scenes needed variety to keep the prose interesting, as well as plenty of dialogue. On top of this, this story ended up being the first in the saga to deconstruct the stereotypes of an adventure story by having modern developments deface some of the clues, the treasure literally just being a gem with no special powers, and having the villains being defeated by just being arrested and going to jail. In fact, this story plays directly into the next installment in the saga, Johnny Thunder and the Trail of Botnik!

    In addition to this, this book also introduced another reality to the cinematic universe's multiverse: Dimension 201. This was created as a way to house most of the original stories from 2002 in its own timeline, which is then free to be explored in the future if any writers so choose. Amongst these stories were many of the original Johnny Thunder stories, thus giving a picture of who this version of Johnny Thunder from elsewhere in the multiverse is. Long story short: like the rest of Dimension 201, his personality is very simplified and unrefined, though talks of further developing this reality are on-going. YOU CAN READ IT HERE.

2020 - Johnny Thunder and the Trail of Botnik and Patrick: The Movie: Entrenching into the Cinematic Universe

    At the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, we committed ourselves to produce new content in spite of the circumstances in order to keep audiences entertained while at home. Amongst these new releases was another installment in the Johnny Thunder Saga that even we hadn't anticipated: the highly ambitious Johnny Thunder and the Trail of Botnik. Created for BRAWL 2020, this film took whatever elements of the LEGO Adventurers Amazon subtheme weren't included in Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients and mixed it up with LEGO City's Jungle Explorers subtheme. The end result was a film that managed to take numerous disparate elements (the Sun Disc, a panther, Alex Botnik, a crashed plane, the Curus Miraculus flower, modern research equipment, and more) and harmonize them together into a lauded BRAWL 2020 entry that has since been called "the greatest filming experience that will never happen again" (knock on wood that we don't have another crippling pandemic any time soon). The film also tied up all of the loose ends from Crazy Compendium and set up the Adventurers for their roles in Project U. YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

    The villains, on the other hand, finally got their own day in the limelight with the spin-off film Patrick: The Movie. It had been in development since 2018, but this origin film was finally released on Christmas Day of 2020 to send off the year with some laughter. In Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo, Patrick describes how Lord Sam Sinister recruited him and his friends into his gang. This film tells that story, with all of the comedic and gristly details left intact (Patrick does mention that they resorted to cannibalism). On top of this, the film also ties itself to past and future stories in the cinematic universe, including many that are not a part of the Johnny Thunder Saga! In fact, this film sets up the plot for Mysteries of the Arctic several years before it's set to be released! YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

2022 - Camel: The Movie: A Spin-Off of a Spin-Off

    Okay, so this LEGO Vidiyo-based spin-off of a spin-off isn't technically an official part of the Johnny Thunder Saga, but it is worth mentioning here due to its connections to Patrick: The Movie and A Very Patrick Christmas. Originally, this film was going to be an April Fool's Day joke, but when the script was submitted for review, the consensus was that the script isn't an actual April Fool's Day joke. As a compromise, an off-the-rails music video related to this film was produced for April Fool's Day 2022, then the film would be released that December. However, the joke version of this film ended up having a lasting impact on this film, mainly by making it into the zany music video-style film that it is today. And on a certain level, this film was also able to bridge together the events of Patrick: The Movie and A Very Patrick Christmas. YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE.

2024 - Johnny Thunder and the Rise to Fame: An Adventurous Origin Story

    Currently set to be released later this year as a part of the Twenty Years Young Celebration, Johnny Thunder and the Rise to Fame will do to Johnny Thunder what Patrick: The Movie did to Patrick Hooligans: discover where this character came from and how they got entangled in adventuring. The film is just about ready to shoot, with the script by Eli Hutchinson ready to go. The film introduces an earlier Johnny Thunder and explores how he met the Adventurers, why he has a rivalry with Lord Sam Sinister, and why he's now a world-famous adventurer. And just like Patrick: The Movie, it's bookended by the present day, though in this case, the backdrop is the final preparation for Sarah and Lance's wedding. It's going to be loosely adapted from the LEGO Adventurers Minifigure Handbook from 2002, so there's lots of action planned for both Denali and the Colorado River (ironically, that means that this film features a location that was cut from Johnny Thunder and the Wisdom of the Ancients). Stay tuned for more information about this film throughout the year!

2025-Beyond - The Future of the Johnny Thunder Saga: A Path to Legends of the Universe

    After Twenty Years Young has concluded, we're not shying away from more Johnny Thunder. Yes, while Johnny Thunder and the Rise to Fame's release will mean that we've held to our 2010 promise to produce at least six films in the Johnny Thunder Saga by 2025, that does not mean that we're planning on stopping. On the contrary, we have plans to expand Johnny Thunder's presence even further. We've already announced that the film Johnny Thunder and the Wonders Beneath the Waves is going to be a Johnny Thunder Saga film that will also be a part of Project U, and we're still working on the remake Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo: The Adventure Retold. This is all leading up to Johnny's presence in the mega movie Legends of the Universe, which brings the entire cinematic universe together.

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