We’ve been hearing about Patrick Read Johnson’s film 5-25-77 since way back in 2005. Based on his own experiences as a socially awkward high school kid back in 1977, it captures his quest to see Star Wars on the summer it was released, before anyone else really knew what it was. There was a time when this movie’s release was being planned to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. That was two years ago. Since then the movie has basically fallen off the face of the earth amidst rumours that Patrick Read Johnson had run out of money, or that the movie was simply not good enough to get picked up by a distributor.

Now, with the release of the similarly-themed Fanboys on DVD, it looks like this movie is showing signs of life yet again. Last year we heard that the movie had been renamed to simply ‘77 and was being prepped for release at the Toronto Film Festival. It didn’t play at TIFF last year, but it did premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival apparently, and a new trailer has since been released on the official website. Here’s the thing: it is the exact same trailer we saw back in 2006, just with a different title at the end. I’ve embedded the original below for the purposes of comparison. It still doesn’t seem like this thing is any closer to getting released. What is the deal? Fanboys had it hard enough, but this movie seems to be one of the most troubled independent productions in the history of film. If the movie’s actually finished, how is it that no one will release it? Can it really be that bad? Surely not worse than Fanboys!