How To Watch Mark Hamill's Lost Roger Corman Movie, Virtually Heroes, At Home
At 96 years old, movie producer Roger Corman described himself as "semi-retired" in a 2022 interview with Paste, noting that he still has a deal to remake "Little Shop of Horrors" for Paramount Pictures. With a career spanning over 400 movies, which helped launch the careers of filmmakers like James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, Corman has made just about every kind of genre movie under the sun — including a video game movie starring Mark Hamill.
"Virtually Heroes" isn't a movie based on a video game, but rather a low-budget precursor to "Free Guy," starring Robert Baker and Brent Chase as two video game characters who are tired of dying over and over again. In a nod to his most famous role, Hamill plays a wise monk in brown robes who agrees to teach Baker's character "the cheat codes of life."
Directed by G.J. Echternkamp and executive produced by Corman, "Virtually Heroes" was part of the official selection at the Sundance Film Festival ... in 2013. It has since sat gathering dust for a decade, but in August 2022 it was acquired by Screen Media, which launched the movie digitally on January 17, 2023. According to Variety, Screen Media has partnered with fellow Chicken Soup for the Soul subsidiary Popcornflix, an ad-supported VOD platform, for the release.
How to watch Virtually Heroes at home
First of all, if you've seen a lot of Roger Corman B-movies, particularly Vietnam war movies directed by Cirio Santiago, then there's a good chance you've seen chunks of "Virtually Heroes" already. The film's action is largely cobbled together using stock footage from Santiago's movies, and Corman cheerfully admitted that it was an experiment in recycling. "I thought if I could find a way to use the big battle scenes from all of these pictures and put it together in a new picture and shoot just a short period of time to tie them all together, I could get a big-looking picture for very little money," he said back in 2013.
But if you're a connoisseur of Corman films (or a fan of "Mystery Science Theater 3000") and you're not put off by the idea of watching a mishmash of stock footage and hastily-shot new scenes with a bit of Mark Hamill thrown in, you can now watch "Virtually Heroes" in the comfort of your own home. The movie released on January 17, 2023, and can be bought or rented on Google Play and Vudu. The DVD is set to release on January 24, 2023, and "Virtually Heroes" is still expected to end up on Popcornflix eventually, though there's no set release date yet.
Why the long wait?
Speaking to Polygon, G.J. Echkternkamp shed some light on how "Virtually Heroes" became a "lost movie" in the first place, and why it's finally being released now. After it screened at Sundance distribution offers did come in, but none that satisfied producer Roger Corman:
"I think it was just one of these weird times. 10 years ago, streaming was taking over, and I think Roger was not happy with the money that all the different platforms were offering. It just wasn't that lucrative. He had been working with Syfy for the past 10 years, doing, like, 'Sharktopus,' and those deals pay a lot more up front. And I think he was just waiting for something better to come along.
"And I was helpless — I didn't fund it, so I couldn't just say, 'I want it out there. Take whatever, I want people to see it!' And then I moved on, we all moved on. Every once in a while, someone would come back around and make an offer on it, and I would encourage it, but it wasn't enough money. And then, after 10 years, I managed to convince him. Finally, after 10 years, he was like, 'Okay, fine.'"
The director also shared the story behind Mark Hamill coming aboard such a low-budget project. Corman had been pushing to find a star, since even low-budget movies need a big name attached to help sell them. Hamill was ultimately sold on the movie after watching Echternkamp's short film "Captain Fork," a dark comedy about a father who removes all the childproofing from his house in the hopes that his five-year-old son will have an accident and die. Apparently Hamill is just a really big fan of movies about dysfunctional father-son relationships.