Back in 2013, the entire world was enchanted when the people of San Francisco transformed their town into the fictional Gotham City in order to support the wish of a young boy sick with Leukemia. Now you can relive all of the extreme emotions of the events with this trailer for Batkid Begins - a documentary made about the event. Prepare a box of tissues.
This emotional first look at the upcoming film debuted over on USA Today, and you'd have to be pretty damn cynical to not be emotionally affected by it. Okay, so the final line "In helping him to live this dream, we were saving ourselves" is just a tiny bit too much, but it comes from a good place and the rest of the trailer is just straight-up charming.
Co-written, produced, and directed by filmmaker Dana Nachman, Batkid Begins recounts the story of 5-year-old Miles Scott, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was just 18 years old. More than anything in the world, the young boy loves superheroes and Batman, so when given the opportunity to be a part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, he asked for the chance to be a real-life superhero. More than 25,000 people - from San Francisco and elsewhere - teamed up to transform the Northern California city into a city of comic book heroes and villains, and gave Miles the chance to be the Dark Knight. The event got so big that even President Barack Obama took notice and filmed a special message for the young kid.
This documentary was originally funded as part of an Indiegogo campaign that launched this past summer, and obviously found a great deal of success. The project initially asked for $100,000 to complete the film, and after a month of fundraising, 946 people contributed $109,630 to the movie. Obviously there was a good amount of passion behind getting this movie made, and it will be fascinating to see the finished result.
The Batkid Begins documentary will be heading to theaters on June 26th, but that definitely won't be the end of the story's time in Hollywood. Back in January it was announced that Julia Roberts is attached to both star in and produce a narrative film version of Miles Scott's story. The project is still very much in the early stages, so it's unclear exactly when we might actually get to see it - but response to Dana Nachman's movie could wind up putting it on the fast track.
