A Day With SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie (unproduced unauthorized direct-to-DVD mockumentary film; 2011)

From The Lost Media Wiki
Revision as of 17:20, 10 October 2019 by Zreoyx (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
ADayWithSpongeBobSquarePantsTheMovie HQCover.jpg

The DVD cover.

Status: Non-existent

A Day with SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie is an unproduced, unauthorized mockumentary that Reagal Films and MVD would distribute. The movie has been postponed, but the director plans to make the film through a crowd funding effort.

Premise

The official website of Reagal Films (via retellings in specific YouTube videos and web archives) gives a premise to the film:

“In this mockumentary, SpongeBob lives above ground like all Hollywood superstars. Afraid that SpongeBob is becoming old news, his boss runs a contest called "Spend a Day with SpongeBob". The contest makes SpongeBob the talk of the town, as thousands of kids enter to win. The lucky winner is Seth, and he is ecstatic about his day with SpongeBob. However, the day becomes a roller coaster ride as things don’t go quite the way they planned.”

Production

The film maker (who is pseudonymized "Mr. Orange" for reasons of privacy) wanted to create a family movie that pays tribute to the John Hughes films he watched as he grew up. He wrote a script and approached a variety of filmmakers, including Jonathan Salami, who was involved in several of Reagal's films. Nevertheless, after talks with Salami and many others at Reagal, it was decided that the film was going well beyond the budget that would be given to Mr. Orange.

Mr. Orange also initially refused to make the film out of fear of Nickelodeon and Viacom's legal concerns, but he was told, after a consultation with a lawyer, that he could make the film if it was a parody; it would also help if it were live action and acknowledged that it was absolutely unofficial.

Mr. Orange set out to create the pitch cover for suppliers and manufacturers after speaking with his attorney. He requested Jorge Pacheco, an illustrator, to produce a drawing similar to the famous pineapple house. He also bought a picture of a child that jumped excitedly in the sky.

After the positive reception of his pitch cover, Reagal Films offered to help him by uploading it to Amazon in order to see if there is any demand via pre-orders. During pre-production, the movie was also given a barcode.

The development of the film, however, was still faced with financial problems; the movie thus was born into development hell. On August 3, 2016, it was announced that a crowdfunding effort would be launched in September of that year to produce the movie. However, the crowdfunding effort has not yet been made.

The Search Team Behind the "Lost" Film

Several users on The Lost Media Wiki put together a search effort on a now-locked forum thread to find the "lost" mockumentary.[1]

The search gained the attention of the news site Gawker [2] and YouTube personality RebelTaxi, who made a notable video about it.

French website Motherboard [3] also talked about this "lost" mockumentary as one of the most searched-for pieces of lost media after Cracks had been found. The search effort has been featured on Bedhead Bernie's Animation Warehouse.

Please note that the information in these videos and articles is now outdated and was speculative regarding Reagal Films, its employees and the many other theories surrounding A Day With SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie.

Conclusion

Since Bedhead Bernie found a related phone number in a free classified ad, Lorenzo Holley was successfully contacted on 6 May 2016. During the calls, Holley said that the film would be released via crowdfund. He also denied that Reagal's official website hosted malware. As of yet, the crowdfunding effort has not been launched.

On August 3, 2016, Bedhead Bernie and the team Ongoing Mysteries created two concluding videos for the search after they contacted Mr. Orange. Mr Orange clarified that Reagal Films is only a film distributor and is not a front for any kind of money laundering scheme. Among debunking many other theories surrounding the film's search effort, he also released five pages of the undeveloped film's script, all of which can be viewed in the videos below.

Gallery

RebelTaxi talking about the "lost" film. NOTE: the final part of the video is a joke.

Conclusion video that includes a script reading and interview with the film's creator.

Beadhead Bernie's first video on the topic.

Ongoing Mysteries presentation (includes calls from Lorenzo Holley).

The original video announcing that Lorenzo Holley had been contacted.

External Link

References