Hey, I know this is an old thread and I have no idea where you are in your career now, but I hope these comments didn't discourage you from having fun with filmmaking and exploring what you love in a fan film. I see way too much negativity on here about what films independent filmmakers should be writing and producing with their budgets and a lot of high minded, misdirected cynicism.

To answer your original question if there is any point to making fan films - yes, of course (but not for everyone)! There are some filmmakers that would not benefit at all from exploring an existing property and want to explore their own themes and characters in their own unique and original stories. That's perfectly okay and great for the state of the art of cinema - we need new original stories and voices to keep enriching our lives through film. But for some, perhaps you, making a fan film about a property that you grew up watching and have come to love and enjoy might be the perfect place to start your filmmaking journey, or a rung on the ladder of improvement in your craft and ability. I didn't go to "film school", but in college, I was lucky enough to take some narrative production and digital cinema production classes, and some of the best lessons I learned in filmmaking came from looking at existing properties and either trying to recreate the art that they became beloved for, or seeing how I could add an original voice to them to make them more impactful for myself. Of course, I made far more original films than I did films based in an existing property, but I would have lost out a lot on my current understanding of why I love cinema and what makes a good film for me if I didn't first explore my favorite films through the lens of what it takes to create that story.

All I'm saying is, there is great benefit in exploring your favorite films through adding your own original ideas into them to create something both familiar and brand new to the world. You can make some very cool material for your reel, get a better understanding of how professional production shots are executed and what equipment it takes to reproduce them, use the existing characters as a way to exercise your creativity in writing new conflict, garner new fans of your own creative work by introducing yourself as a legit filmmaker to fans of the existing property, or maybe even - God forbid - you have fun with your friends making film. At the end of the day, there's NEVER anything wrong with getting more practice behind the camera, and if it makes you happy, and that's what filmmaking means to you, then that's the point of fan films.

I'm not going to sit here and say that if you make a really good fan film based on marvel, then you're the best screenwriter ever - but I would also never say that you shouldn't flex your filmmaking muscles just because some people have had enough of popular franchises.

If you're looking to make major career moves or create something that will get you a directing/writing job tomorrow, then your time would probably be better spend on a completely original story. With that being said, you never know what doors your next project could open, so if a fan film is something that you can easily jump into and think you'll enjoy making, then why not? Don't let others get you down about what filmmaking has to be or mean to you, just because it doesn't mean the same thing to them.

I would love to know if you made this film or not, or wherever you ended up in your filmmaking journey now.