Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation is a 1989 American fan film, made as a shot-for-shot remake of the 1981 Indiana Jones adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Using the original film's screenplay and score, it principally starred and was filmed, directed, and produced over a seven-year period by three Mississippi teenagers (Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb).

Plot

Set in 1936, the film pits Indiana Jones (Strompolos) against a group of Nazis who are searching for the Ark of the Covenant which Adolf Hitler believes will make his army invincible.

Cast

Taken from theraider.net:

• Chris Strompolos as Indiana Jones
• Angela Rodriguez as Marion Ravenwood
• Eric Zala as Dr. René Belloq
• Ted Ross as Arnold Toht
• Alan Stenum as Sallah
• William Coon as Marcus Brody

Production

Shooting for the film began in 1982, when Strompolos, Zala and Lamb were only 12 years old, and continued over the next seven summers. It was made on a shoe-string budget of around $5000, greatly contrasting with the original's $18 million budget. It was shot out of sequence, so due to its long filming period many actors randomly appear at different ages throughout the course of the film. As Raiders of the Lost Ark was not available on any home media format when they began filming, they were forced to collect all kinds of material about the film, including magazine articles, photographs, and even an illicit recording of the film's audio captured during a re-release screening of the original film in 1982.

In 2014, members of the cast raised money on Kickstarter to re-unite and complete the film with the one scene they were not able to re-create as teenagers: the explosion of the flying wing aircraft.