Trivia / Maradonia and the Shadow Empire

• Bury Your Art: Maradonia and the Shadow Empire is considered immensely bad and the creators have since done everything they could to hide its existence. A screener copy was saved by a YouTuber and shared to the public, albeit with a prominent watermark over it.
• Descended Creator: Author Gloria Tesch plays Maya, and her mother and series illustrator Marina Terkulova plays Arabella.
• Development Hell: The film was announced in 2011, but wasn't released until five years later.
• Franchise Killer: The negative reception to Maradonia and the Shadow Empire, coupled with the death of Gerry Tesch, led Gloria Tesch herself to pull all of her Maradonia novels from print and try to scrub the internet of references to the series. The film only survives publicly due to a YouTube uploader shared a screener copy of it.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As it failed to get a DVD release after its premiere, the only way to watch this film is a bootleg screener (complete with a watermark) that someone put online, because it was only shown once in one theater.
• No Budget: The actual budget is unknown, but doesn't appear to be high.
• Stillborn Franchise: This film ends with a "Will Return" Caption promising a sequel titled Maradonia and the Escape from the Underworld. Considering that the creators decided to bury the Maradonia franchise as a whole due to the horrible reception of the first film, it's very unlikely that Escape from the Underworld will ever get made.
• Troubled Production:
  • Dr. Tesch never provided his director Troy Bowman and cinematographer Paulian Morris with a deal or a deal memo. Bowman ended up leaving the project after hours of unpaid prep. Producer Patricia Sofia left after Tesch tried to cut a side deal behind her back to avoid having to pay her. These incidents led to Morris leaving in disgust.
  • The Tesches launched an Indiegogo campaign in an attempt to raise funds to continue their work on the movie. It failed miserably, only making 7% of its $20,000 goal... and most of the pledges were from Gloria Tesch herself.
  • According to some people who were involved with the production, its "director" Dr. Tesch squandered most of his family's money financing the film, which led to his wife leaving and the Tesches being evicted from their house.
  • The planned DVD release never materialized — presumably Dr. Tesch couldn't find any company willing to distribute the movie and couldn't afford to self-publish it.
• What Could Have Been: At one point, a Chinese production company named Wardour Studios announced plans to adapt Maradonia. Their film would've been titled Maradonia: A Mermaid's Tale, and Maya would have died in the prologue, with Joey becoming the protagonist. Originally set for release in 2019, it was pushed back to 2021 before being quietly abandoned.

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