I helped finance a movie this week.
The makers of Veronica Mars, the passionately admired series that ended a three-season run in 2007, have long talked about a movie continuing the characters’ stories. They finally worked out a deal with the show’s studio, Warner Bros., to make a low-budget screen Veronica — if they could raise $2 million.
They then took to the fundraising website Kickstarter with a funny video pitch featuring Kristen Bell and other stars of the show, and promised that donors would receive nifty prizes — scripts, T-shirts, stars doing your voicemail message, premiere invitations — depending on the size of the donation.
With a tightly planned production schedule, the Mars folks wanted to raise the money in 30 days.
It took less than one.
Well before Wednesday was over, the donations had passed $2 million and pledges were still coming in. By Friday morning, the funding total had passed $3.2 million, with close to 50,000 separate pledges ranging from $10 to, in one case, $10,000.
“Holy cow, what a day,” series creator and mastermind Rob Thomas said in an email to donors.
In a later note he added: “We were the fastest Kickstarter project to hit $1M, we were the fastest Kickstarter project to hit $2M. We set the record for highest goal ever achieved. (Other KS projects have done better than us — so far — but none set a goal as high as our $2M goal.) We’re also the largest film project in Kickstarter history.
“Cannot thank everyone enough,” he said.
The production is looking at getting more money — adding more prizes, for one thing, and international donations (which were not possible at first). The extra money could, after all, mean a bigger movie.
In the Kickstarter pitch video, Ryan Hansen (who played Dick Casablancas on the show) called the added cash “our car-chase and nudity fund” while Jason Dohring (Logan Echolls) said it could mean “brooding in more exotic and expensive locations.”
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Wait. What Is This All About? For those of you tuning in late, the three seasons of Veronica Mars are on DVD, and available as Amazon.com instant video and on iTunes.
It ran on the old UPN network and then on the CW, a combination of UPN and the old WB network. Bell played a high-school student (later in college) who worked part-time as an investigator for her private-eye father (Enrico Colantoni). Both were outsiders in an upper-crust community called Neptune, but both still had to interact with the wealthy and powerful, some of whom were old friends — and some of whom had secrets that Mars father and daughter wanted to find.
There were mysteries aplenty over the course of the show, as well as romantic entanglements, social struggles and smart dialogue. Stories could tie up in a single episode, or stretch over a whole season. It was as addicting as it was puzzling. One critic said after the second season, “It’s the only show I watch every week, and I still don’t know what’s going on half the time.”
Looking back at my blog posts from when the show was on the air, I found both frustration and, in greater quantity, exhilaration. The show had a melancholy side, from beginning to end, and that may have contributed to its low ratings. But it was at times the best thing on television, and certainly one of my favorites.
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I Should Care Because? People are wondering if the way to finance movies — especially for productions with a small but passionate fan base — has changed for good. One of the people behind Terriers, a short-lived FX series, said on Twitter he was closely watching the Mars experiment. And I have been dreaming of other too-brief shows — Deadwood, Carnivale, Lights Out and more — working some financial magic for a return. Talk to independent filmmakers about how much time they spend on raising money, and ask if they would like to get $2 million in a day.
Not that everyone is enamored of the Kickstarter approach. On theatlanticwire.com, Richard Lawson griped that “they’re asking you to pay for what will ultimately be a studio movie. This is not some independent film, financed on credit cards and bake sales. Nor is this an investment that anyone who donates will ever see a return on; essentially you’ll be a pro bono producer.”
But the studio by itself was not going to make the movie. And the collecting from fans is a way to let the people who love the show feel as if they have some show-business power, at least as a community. They were able to make something happen. Something fun. (Even if you don’t donate, watch the video, particularly the participation of Colantoni.)
So I chipped in. Not a lot, but something. I loved the show, after all. Bell has rarely had roles as good. And it was cool to watch the figures rise over the course of the day as other Mars fans joined. You might have been looking for pope smoke on Wednesday; I was looking at donation tallies.
And this may be another game-changer in a major year for them. Netflix’s releasing all 13 first-season episodes of House of Cards at once — letting subscribers decide how much they wanted to watch without waiting for one show a week — has prompted rethinking how to present programs. Now, the money game could change, although Alan Sepinwall of Hitfix.com has asked “if this is a major shift in the paradigm, or a single longshot hitting big before the status quo reasserts itself.”
I am trying to look at it optimistically: Is this the way Community finally gets its shouted-for “six seasons and a movie” — or at least the movie?
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Coming Soon … The Cleveland International Film Festival begins April 3 and, as a warm-up, we will have a CIFF trivia quiz online beginning Tuesday. Look for it at http://cifftrivia.ohio.com. There are multiple-choice questions related to the festival and concocted by yours truly. Submit your answers, and you’ll be eligible for a grand prize of two tickets to the festival’s opening night gala, or runner-up awards of festival vouchers. You have through March 24 to enter, with the winners announced on March 25.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and Ohio.com, including the HeldenFiles Online blog, www.ohio.com/blogs/heldenfiles. He is also on Facebook and Twitter. You can contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
