Ultimate Geek Movie: ‘Fanboys’ Trailer And Poster

This week, a new trailer and poster for Fanboys hit the internet and it looks like the film will be tons of fun.

Cinematical premiered the brand new poster (as seen on the left) and you can easily see the resemblance to the poster from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. It looks like they’re trying to market the film as an Apatow-style comedy and rightfully so since the cast features many familiar faces from the Apatow crew.

For a higher resolution version of the poster, check out the exclusive at Cinematical.

The Fanboys cast features Sam Huntington, Chris Marquette, Dan Fogler, Jay Baruchel and Kristen Bell as the leads playing the group of friends. There are also plenty of stars making cameos throughout the film. Some of the notable guest appearances include William Shatner, Kevin Smith, Seth Rogan, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and my personal favorite; Ray Park.

Check out the trailer and see what you think:

Fanboys is a comedy set in 1998 prior to the release of the long-awaited Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The story follows a group of friends on a mission to break into Skywalker Ranch to see the film early. Why? Well, in the original plot for the film, one of the friends is diagnosed with cancer and is not expected to live long enough to see Ep.1 in theatres.

And here begins the controversy…

Without going into too much detail, the film was originally supposed to be released last August but upon receiving more funding, the date was pushed back to this January so they could shoot some additional scenes with the increased budget. Getting the increasingly-popular cast members back together for shooting caused more delays and they were not able to re-shoot until the end of 2007.

The re-shoots were directed by a different director than the one who did the principal photography and news started hitting the net that the film was being re-edited to take out the cancer storyline and instead include more vulgar humor. This caused a firestorm from fans on the internet to the point where protests were organized, mass-mailings to the Weinstein Company, etc. All of this, to save the heart of the story out of fear the movie would be ruined without its true emotional storyline and turned into a “mindless comedy” as said by a loyal fan in a letter to Ain’t It Cool News.

Long story short, two cuts of the film were made and both were test-screened to see which came out on top. In the end, the heart-felt cancer storyline won since it was included in the first completed cut of the film at Star Wars Celebration Europe last summer and in the final cut of the film shown at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

I thought the trailer was pretty funny, although some of the scenes were a bit too corny. I am definitely looking forward to seeing this film finally make it to the big screen (in its proper form) and I hope most movie-goers do too. The continuous delays may actually help in the long run, since most of the actors have been featured in a variety of popular movies since this project began which will help increase the profile of the flick.

Barring any more delays, Fanboys will hit theaters February 9th, 2009.