As stories of extreme movie fandom go, the tale of Chris Strompolos, Jayson Lamb, and Eric Zala, three teens who spent seven straight summers filming a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is among the most endearing. Their obsession with the legendary adventurer has become its own legend, and Steven Spielberg himself has praised the fruits of their ambitious endeavor. Now an upcoming documentary, Raiders!, explores the making of that labor of love, while giving them the chance to reunite some 25 years later, in order to finally complete the tricky airplane scene they avoided shooting as kids—with help from Eli Roth, among others.
In anticipation of that doc, Drafthouse Films has released a side-by-side comparison of the original trailer for Spielberg’s Raiders and the fanboys’ version, and it remains astonishing to see just how faithful those kids’ recreations were:
Raiders! will be released in theaters and on demand June 17, and you can watch a trailer below.
