Veronica Mars fans just bought themselves a big-screen version of the cult favorite TV series.
An crowd-sourcing campaign to raise US$2 million for the project on the Kickstarter website hit its goal in less than a day.
Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas started the effort today with help from series star Kristen Bell.
More than 33,000 contributors had pledged US$2.1 million (NZ$2.5 million) and counting as of this afternoon.
In his online pitch, Thomas promised that, as he put it, “The more money we raise, the cooler movie we can make.”
Veronica Mars, which starred Bell as a young sleuth, ended its three-season run in 2007.
It’s the fastest project yet to reach US$1 million on Kickstarter – in 4 hours, 24 minutes – and the most-funded film or video project to date, according to a spokesman for the site. Previous top movie fundraisers are the planned The Goon” (US$442,000) and Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa (US$406,000), both animated.
Thomas said Veronica Mars owner Warner Bros has given the project its blessing, and Bell and other cast members are ready to begin production this summer for a 2014 release. A studio spokesman said a limited release, meaning it may not be on thousands of screens or in every city, is likely at this point.
The fundraising campaign, which was confirmed by Thomas’ representative at United Talent Agency, ends April 12.
“You have banded together like the sassy little honey badgers you are and made this possibility happen,” Bell said in an online message, promising the “sleuthiest, snarkiest” movie possible.
Bell is currently back on TV in the business management series House of Lies, alongside Don Cheadle.
She and several Veronica Mars cast members appear in a lighthearted video on Kickstarter in which they mull the prospect of reuniting.
The series averaged between 2.2 million and 2.5 million viewers in its two-year run on the now-defunct UPN and final season on the CW network. Those modest numbers are overshadowed by the intense fan devotion that has kept dreams of a movie alive.
Backers are eligible for various goodies, ranging from a PDF copy of the script to be sent on the day the film is released (for a US$10 pledge) to naming rights to a character (for US$8,000). An appearance in the movie, available to one US$10,000 contributor, was snapped up.
Crowdsourcing has given filmmakers a new way to get always-elusive funding. At last month’s Academy Awards, the short documentary Inocente became the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar. It received US$52,000 from 300 contributors.
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– AP
