Friday, March 22, 2013
Has 'Veronica Mars' Kickstarter Campaign Ushered in a New Era of Movie Development?
www.hollywoodreporter.com: Three days into its campaign, The CW drama-turned-movie has shattered several crowd-funding records: fastest Kickstarter project to hit $1 million (4 hours, 24 minutes). Highest goal ever set in the 4-year-old website’s history. And 10 hours after its launch on Wednesday morning, the proposed Veronica Mars movie became the fastest project to hit that $2 million mark. As of Thursday night, it had received more than $3.2 million in pledges, with 28 days to go.
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6 comments:
I don't quite understand the cult fascination this TV show, or any others, really. But I suppose that Veronica Mars, and the other TV shows (like Pushing Daises), are exciting and fascinating for these people. I'm not surprised that they raised so much money in so few days, partly because I'm part of the "online generation" and I've seen Facebook pages and statuses go from zero "likes" to 14,000 "likes" in a few moments. People find their TV and movies and entertainment very dear to their heart, and would of course throw money at something as quick as possible in an effort to please their wishes. Veronica Mars either had a lot of supporters who donated moderately, or a lot less supporters who donated gigantic amounts. Either way, if people could pay to "like" Facebook posts they would, in this case, they've just paid to showcase what their "cult" thing is, and now they can watch their "cult" movie on the internet and revel in the fact that they donated towards it. Do I think it has ushered in a "new era"? Not particularly, because people have been in essence "liking" and "donating" towards things like this since Facebook became a big thing back in 2008 or so. In this instance, they wanted a movie, and they used Kickstarter. That's not much different that things like "Kony 2012" or re-tweeting a celebrity's tweet about their favorite TV show. It's all part of the same "era" and type of interest building and fundraising.
To me, it seems that this specific Kickstarter campaign negates the purpose of the website. Kickstarter is meant for indie projects otherwise unfunded and unknown or emerging artists/producers. This movie is going to be produced by the Warner Bros, starring the famous Kristen Bell and based upon an established, relatively successful TV series. Nothing about this is indie, emerging or lacking funding sources.
Now I do think that this development is exciting and shows a lot of promise for the film industry further expanding its online presence and reaching out to the audiences in a whole new different way. That's great and all, but maybe there should be a different platform for this type of project. And if this phenomenon spreads and more "already successful" enterprises start using crowd-funding, then let's hope that some ambitious, indie-friendly entrepreneur creates a website just like Kickstarter where the projects are monitored to exclude big-deal type "kickstarters".
This is a pretty interesting development, certainly not the first film project to be funded by Kickstarter, (one of my personal favorites is Goon - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/624061548/the-goon-movie-lets-kickstart-this-sucker). However a project with the creative rights still being held by the studio is another ball game all together as the article touches on, but I think that this can bring new life to some of our favorite tv series that met premature endings (from a fans standpoint anyway). Time will tell, and and I hope that maybe something a little more dear to my heart than Veronica Mars will get a chance at resurrection.
I find it really interesting that failed TV shows could have such a huge following when it comes to reviving them for movies. I agree that using Kickstarter is a bit ridiculous because of all the reasons that Camille has already said, but I'm also not surprised that they raised so much money through it. I think it's interesting how the internet is reviving these cult shows like Veronica Mars, Pushing Daisies, Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life, and a million others. I wonder why these shows do so well when people can watch them online but they didn't last on television? I also think it's an interesting idea to release these movies online and do it specifically for the original fan base of the tv shows. I think this could definitely change the way productions get started because, thanks to Kickstarter, it's very easy to tell how much of a following these projects will have. The amount of money that the Veronica Mars movie has already made through Kickstarter is essentially announcing the guaranteed audience. Maybe it was unfair for a movie that isn't indie or new to use Kickstarter, but it was definitely a very smart idea.
I could not disagree with Kelly more. There are plenty of old television series that were cancelled and then later acquired a cult following. One specific show I'm thinking of is the Fox series Firefly that was cancelled due to public disinterest, but this disinterest was due to a programming error by Fox who aired the episodes out of order causing great confusion for the viewers. The show acquired such a following after its cancellation that producers were convinced to make a movie to wrap up the story line which was cut short mid season. So if there is a public interest and they are willing to put forward their own money than theres no reason they shouldn't.
Kickstarter gives hope to all failed artistic endeavors that have held on to some sort of fan base. I think its a fantastic tool for good ideas to come to their realization. It makes fundraising even more accessible and already puts whatever product someone is trying to sell on the map of cyberspace. Another reason I feel Veronica Mars turned out to be so successful, was due to the state of television and film as a whole. What is considered a success is something much much smaller than what is used to mean 5-10 years ago. Simply recouping the production costs is seen as triumph.
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