How much would you pay to greenlight a sequel to your favorite movie or resurrect your favorite canceled TV show for a feature length film? Would you donate $10 and receive a page of the actual script, or would you donate $10,000 in return for an on-screen talking role in the film itself? Sure, it’s worked for short films and other projects, but could a big-budget film requiring millions of dollars in start-up cash be able to raise enough from the public to appease studio heads before investing themselves?
All these questions were recently answered by Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas who took to Kickstarter with a $2,000,000 dollar fundraising goal – and achieved it within 24 hours. Wait, no, sorry, 12 hours – not even an entire day. Thomas put the future of Veronica Mars in the hands of the people, and they responded with a resounding “Hells Yes!” With 25 days left to donate, Thomas’ campaign has raised over $3,600,000, far surpassing a benchmark no one imagined could be easily attainable.
So OK, Veronica Mars made it happen, this is going to be a trend now, right? It’s officially time for the Internet to light up with articles about our favorite canceled or under-watched programs we’d all love to see a Kickstarter for, and I’m sure every director is going to have to field a question about using Kickstarter at some point, but sorry, this is just how fads start.
Either way, it’s always fun to speculate, and I rather enjoy the idea of letting the fans decide the fates of future programming at times, so let’s discuss a few movies which most likely won’t happen without a proper Kickstarter campaign that I wouldn’t mind helping get launched.
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