"Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo" Has Returned!

By: Andrew Bermudez

(Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Headquarters; August 23, 2024)

    For several years, there has been one hypothetical special edition that has lingered out of sight ever since From the Vaults debuted in 2012. Today, twelve years after the question was first brought up, Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo: Special Edition has finally debuted! This and more are below!

Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo: Special Edition has Debuted!

    For years, it was considered controversial to even think about touching Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo, even as other films of ours were going under the knife and coming out of From the Vaults in an almost unrecognizable form. It was, after all, the film that created the online network and our fanbase, so it has a very special, almost sacred, place in our repertoire of content. However, as technology progressed and our arsenal of tools expanded, as well as a changing world and the advent of Twenty Years Young, we decided that it was time to do the unthinkable: re-edit Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo.

    The resulting film, Johnny Thunder and the Secret of Marco Polo: Special Edition, embraces everything that made the film a classic while making sure that the film will be preserved for future generations. The music was most notably replaced with a new soundtrack, which was selected to sound as beautiful as the music selected for the original film. This was partially achieved through what has probably been our only really successful use of artificial intelligence to separate out the original audio, which also allowed us to remix the film's sound effects. Adding digital effects was kept to a minimum, but one major change was the tightening of the film's pacing. Ten whole minutes of improper timing, dead space, racist jokes, and even bit characters were chopped out to help pace out the story. This resulted in what is widely considered to be the best special edition that we've re-released. The film is also now one whole video, which has been embedded above.

Woe to William's Bell Overture: The Symphony of the Realities and Its Release Date

    Unfortunately, that same sense of achievement cannot be said of the film William's Bell Overture: The Symphony of the Realities. Due to writing complications and an entire story re-write, this film has been delayed to beyond Twenty Years Young (that is, 2025 at the earliest). A solution was reached yesterday on how to alter the story, but it's too late to get the film produced in time for the September 22 deadline. The story team is in the process of assembling this new story and how to tell it with only classical music, since the film will still adhere to the parameters of the Music World competition. A new release date will be announced at a later time.

The Archivist is Going Live Action!

    In what is perhaps the strangest piece of news to come out today, the Christmas finale film The Archivist is going to be our first live action film since the release of Station 9 in 2010 (not counting home movies or vacation videos)! This decision was one that wasn't thrown around for its own sake, but with most of this year's releases being animated, this film is able to call back to the early years of 2004-2007 while still telling a new, modern story of discovery, nostalgia, and passion. Eli Hutchinson has been selected to direct the film, which is still on track for a December 20 debut.

All Games Are Being Delayed to 2026!

    In other news, Shady Acres Super Sleuth didn't debut on August 17 because of software limitations for restoring the game. After evaluating what went wrong and how to tackle this moving forward, we have made the decision to delay ALL of the games (including the reimagining of The Lost Ruby: An Interactive Adventure) to 2026. During this time, the existing games will be fully restored before their release dates are announced and an all-new, never-before-seen game will be revealed for release afterwards! On top of this, both Mustache Maniacs-opoly and Mustache Maniacs Film Co. GeoSafari will also be restored for online playing!

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