'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' Remake Team Launches Kickstarter To Finance One Last Scene

It's one of the better stories in film fandom: two kids, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, with cinematographer Jayson Lamb, were such huge fans of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark that they remade the film, shot for shot. It took seven years, but eventually Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation was complete enough for people to watch, and years later even got the attention of Spielberg himself. The creators are not kids any longer, actually; the guys weren't even teens when they started to shoot the Raiders remake, and the project got going in 1982.

But while many people have seen The Adaptation, the creators never really considered it as 100% finished as they were never able to shoot the airplane scene. You know the one, with the giant propellor, and the bald Nazi mechanic, and all that blood.

Now, as a documentary about The Adaptation and a dramatic film about its creation both get into gear, the original three creators are trying to raise money to shoot that one final scene.

The Kickstarter page has a timeline of the public awareness of Raiders of the Lost Ark: An Adaptation, and info about updates and rewards that include "never-before-seen Raiders Adaptation outtakes along with once-in-a-lifetime rewards for supporters, including personal DVD copies of the kid classic."

There's also the following statement about what they're hoping to achieve:

As children, we managed to pull off every scene, every stunt... EXCEPT for one. The Flying Wing Scene.   Yep, that awesome sequence where Indy fights the bald Nazi under the moving airplane.  In our ten years of screenings, people have been urging us to do it.  And so, the idea of adding the ultimate mythological bookend to our childhood saga has brought us back together – the team is stronger than ever.

As a solo project, and also as a driving set piece for Jeremy Coon's documentary, the idea was born to return to the Mississippi Gulf Coast 25 years later to finally complete the Raiders Adaptation by reuniting the cast and tackling and recreating the classic action sequence.