A Day With SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie was an upcoming mockumentary that was to be distributed by Reagal Films and MVD. The film was canceled, but the creator behind the film is reportedly still planning to make the film through a crowdfunding effort.
Premise[]
In this mockumentary, SpongeBob lives above ground like all Hollywood superstars. Afraid that SpongeBob is becoming old news, his boss runs a contest called "Spend a Day with SpongeBob". The contest makes SpongeBob the talk of the town, as thousands of kids enter to win. The lucky winner is Seth, and he is ecstatic about his day with SpongeBob. However, the day becomes a roller coaster ride as things don’t go quite the way they planned.
Production[]
The creator of the film (going under the pseudonym "Mr. Orange" for privacy reasons) wanted to create a family film that paid homage to the John Hughes films he liked when growing up. He wrote a script and reached out to a number of producers, including Jonathan Salami, who had been involved with a number of films associated with distributor Reagal Films. However, after discussions with Salami and many others at Reagal, it was determined that the film would go way over the budget that would be given to him.
Mr. Orange was also hesitant to make the film out of fear of legal concerns from Nickelodeon or Viacom, but after talking with a lawyer, he was told that he could make the film if it was a parody; it would also help if it was live-action and clearly acknowledging that it was completely unofficial.
After talking with his lawyer, Mr. Orange set out to create a cover to pitch to distributors and producers. He commissioned an illustrator named Jorge Pacheco to create a drawing that looked similar to SpongeBob’s iconic pineapple house. He also purchased a stock image of a boy in an orange shirt jumping.
After his pitch cover received positive reception, distributor Reagal Films offered to help him by posting it on Amazon to see if there would be any interest via pre-orders. The film was also given a barcode while it was in pre-production.
However, the production of the film was still facing budgetary issues; therefore Mr. Orange put the movie’s production through development hell. On August 3, 2016, it was announced that a crowdfunding effort would be launched in September of that year to produce the movie, but so far, the crowd-funding effort has not actually happened yet.