Almost 5 Years and Still Waiting: Putting a Spotlight on Backers Concerns (especially concerning likenesses) with “FAKING FILMATION”

From international shipping issues at Mattel Creations to the Walmart “Cancel Con” debacle, in an effort to give a voice to the community, He-Mania.com tries to focus on issues impacting that community. And today, we thought it might be beneficial to shine a spotlight on frustrations some have been experiencing for years with a project called “Faking Filmation“.

“Faking Filmation” is a proposed documentary that surrounds a classic Filmation-like “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” fan episode titled the “The Return of Faker” by He-Man super fan James Eatock.

It was a clever idea: repurposing backgrounds, character models, animation and voice recordings from the 1983 classic He-Man cartoon (and other Filmation works) with new elements to create a fan 131st episode, so to speak.

If you own the “The Eternia Collection” set on Blu-ray, you can already watch “The Return of Faker” right now because James Eatock assisted Plaion Pictures on this collection.

All you need to do is insert “Disk 20 – Extras”, go to the last selection titled “Werbung & Promotion”…

…and then press the right arrow on your controller and Faker appears. Then just press play.

While “The Return of Faker” may not be everyone’s cup of tea, as a fan episode (in the context that it should be judged), it’s a real fun endeavor and a love letter to the series.

However, wouldn’t you know it, the rights holders to the 1983 “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” cartoon felt otherwise, and they pulled the plug on the fan project.

Enter Zero Cool Films, a division of Pyre Productions, the parent company run by Rob McCallum. They started a kickstarter campaign for a “Faking Filmation” documentary that is supposed to surround the saga of this fan episode (among other things.)

Their goal was to, along with delivering a documentary, include the entire fan episode “The Return of Faker” in the documentary:

On April 6, 2021, the Kickstarter campaign was launched, and with a $30,000 goal, 1,204 backers overfunded it by 381.71% with a pledge of $114,513 to bring the documentary to life.

Some add-ons purchased would be delivered by the creator of the fan episode himself, James Eatock, including having “your likeness” added to “The Return of Faker” fan episode.

Plus the 9 additional minutes would be added to “The Return of Faker”.

The estimated delivery date for this project was January 2023, but now over 3 years past the promise date and close to 5 years from the launch date, many backers of the project have become disgruntled over the ordeal…

…louder than ever when super fan James Eatock put out a video last week that he will be showing the full 40 Minute “The Return of Faker” episode at MOTUFest (a convention this September in Northern Kentucky) with possibly Rob McCallum there to show “Faking Filmation.”

Normally that would be awesome news, considering they were restrained from showing the fan episode years before. But apparently at this point, the Kickstarter backers hadn’t heard something concrete about their deliverables… yet it was being shown at a convention.

So after the backlash, both Rob McCallum and James Eatock quickly put out statements, promising to deliver on those the deliverables. You can find those statements HERE and HERE.

Yet, some are still concerned those deliverables may not be met, especially the fans that paid for their likeness to be added to “The Return of Faker” fan episode. The question was raised for years, but a backer as recent as 7 months ago received the below response:

Yet, still, as recent as two days ago, it seems many people have not been reached out to, as expressed on social media, our community forums, and the kickstarter itself (where the below examples were pulled:)

Several people have contacted He-Mania.com directly about it as well, to see if we can assist since they are not getting responses.

It is hard to imagine why it has been almost five years and these backers have still yet to be contacted, however we are not going to speculate where exactly the disconnect is.

We do hope shining a light on this issue is something that will help people get the responses they are looking for… with it ultimately being resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

We’ll see you next time.