The Kickstarter Effect and What it Means for Your Most Desired Movies


kickstarter

You may or may have heard of the recent phenomenon that was the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter. It’s not scifi, so it’s not something we covered. The ripple effect that it could have on scifi movies is, however, VERY interesting to us here at SciFi Mafia. Here’s a little background on what happened with the Veronica Mars Kickstarter.

March 13th, creator and writer Rob Thomas (with a blessing from Warner Brothers) opened a Kickstarter to allow fans to fund a Veronica Mars movie. Within 6 hours the movie had reached it $2 million goal. As of me writing this it has amassed $3,610,584.

BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Can it be done for Firefly? Joss Whedon spoke to Buzzfeed on just this topic, because Browncoats are insatiable when it comes to Firefly.

I’ve said repeatedly that I would love to make another movie with these guys, and that remains the case. It also remains the case that I’m booked up by Marvel for the next three years, and that I haven’t even been able to get Dr. Horrible 2 off the ground because of that. So I don’t even entertain the notion of entertaining the notion of doing this, and won’t. Couple years from now, when Nathan [Fillion]’s no longer [on] Castle and I’m no longer the Tom Hagen of the Marvel Universe and making a giant movie, we might look and see where the market is then. But right now, it’s a complete non-Kickstarter for me.

It seems that it really boils down to time and hopefully (fingers crossed) when the time is right, he knows he can turn to the fans to get another movie out there.

How about Chuck? THR spoke to star of the show Zachary Levi and he was very enthusiastic.

If I had the power and the rights, I would have done it myself already.

So much of the budget goes into advertising. If we came out with a Chuck movie now, I don’t know how many more people who didn’t watch Chuck would watch this movie. You don’t need to do a theatrical release. You’re doing it for the fans.

You’d want to do an online release, and if people want to pay extra dollars to get the DVD and Blu-ray, you can make money from those purchases. I would keep overhead as low as possible [with] social marketing.

So, I guess it’s not really up to Zachary Levi whether or not the Chuck movie gets made, but maybe he can light a fire under executive producer, Josh Schwartz.

How about Pushing Daisies? Brian Fuller also spoke to THR on starting a Kickstarter for Pushing Daisies. He is interested, but fans would really have to dig deep to make it worth while.

For something like Pushing Daisies, which is more elaborate visually and also would require extensive prosthetics and those sorts of complicating production elements, it’s a little more daunting.

Personally, I would have NO issue signing on to help fund a Pushing Daisies movie. Any other movie projects that you would like to see Kickstarted?


Jess Orso
Written by Jess Orso

Jess is the Managing Editor and Southern Correspondent for SciFiMafia.com