Mysteria Film Group

The Mysteria Film Group (a.k.a. The Mysteriacs) is the production team consisting of Patrick A. McIntire and Adrian P. Vanderbosch. Their primary project is the movie version of Myst: The Book of Ti'ana.

Prelude
Origins

In January 2004, Patrick McIntire and Adrian Vanderbosch - two filmmakers from South Bend, IN - discussed the possibility of turning one of the Myst novels into a full-length feature film. Adrian began by writing a scene from Myst: The Book of Ti'ana involving Aitrus and Veovis discussing the Art of Writing - the practice of creating books that contained portals to the worlds they described. Since this scene took place on a boat trip to the island of K'veer, the planned trailer was called Passage To K'veer - after which they named their fledgling company, Project Passage.

Evolution
Over the course of the next year, they sought out various talents to help in their endeavor, such as a graphic artist to produce a storyboard. They enlisted the world-renowned illustrator John Howe to produce several concept drawings, based on the evolving script.

Presentation
At the end of 2005, Patrick and Adrian spent several grueling months filming a presentation that featured a greenscreen background, in order to demonstrate their technical abilities. They inserted animatics based on the conceptual sketches into the presentation and submitted it to Cyan Worlds for review in December.

Piqued interest
The presentation resonated with Tony Fryman (president of Cyan Worlds), who described past failed efforts by the SciFi channel to make a film of the Myst books. Over the course of the next two years, Tony and Rand Miller (CEO of Cyan Worlds) engaged in talks about the direction of the film.

In November 2007, Patrick and Adrian submitted the first 80 pages of the script to be reviewed by the Cyan staff. Rand Miller had sent back an enthusiastic reply a month later, stating that this preliminary script "Got me very excited - great job! I would just love to see this movie!".

Recent events
A puzzling site
Armed with a blessing by Rand Miller, the Mysteriacs launched a teaser web site on January 1, 2008, that began with a series of coded puzzles.

A post by Adrian (under the guise of "linking_lady") on the Uru Obsession forums announced the site. This caught the notice of the Myst fan base, known for their affinity for puzzle solving. Each time a coded message was decoded, the Mysteriacs revealed a fragment of one of two conceptual drawings created by Christopher Petrocchi. The codes ranged from simple substitution ciphers to a Trifid cipher.
The Blog
Finally, in mid-February, the production blog was revealed. Initially, it only contained Rand's foreword and a few entries scattered over the past 15 years. The identities and histories of the filmmakers slowly came into light as they added more entries from the past, while also creating new entries about their current efforts.

Various articles on the Mysteriacs began to appear on the Web and in print.

Movie Projects

Myst: Book of Ti'ana
To date, the script is 90% finished. They've discussed casting options for some of the lead characters. They have completed the outline, treatments, animatics and concept art; they are also working with Tony Fryman to present the idea to several agents. The production timeline still needs to be fleshed out. What is known is that Cyan Worlds has fully endorsed this project, citing that "Weùll all be part of every step that Adrian and Patrick take along the way!".

For Travis Preston
Although not a Mysteria Film Group (MFG) project, "For Travis Preston" is an independent comedy short by the two MFG principals, Patrick and Adrian. The plot centers on a young professional named Cory Wright, whom everyone insists on calling Travis Preston. The script is complete, the production crew is mostly established, and casting has begun. Filming will commence this summer.

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See Also

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