Wowzers!
In less than a day, the The Veronica Mars Movie Kickstarter project has raised over a million dollars. As of this writing, it was at $1,298,921 pledged of $2,000,000 goal. I have no doubt that it will achieve the goal within a day even though the project is available to be funded for up to 30 days.
For those of you unfamiliar, Veronica Mars was a TV show in the mid-2000′s about a young woman who works as a private investigator and solves various cases and mysteries. The show was popular, acclaimed and, it seems, has a little bit of a cult following.
The creator of the show wants to make a movie based on the show, but couldn’t get traditional funding. Apparently, it was optioned, but never funded. So, now he’s going straight to the fans. For as little as a $35 pledge, you will get updates on the production of the movie as it’s happening and a copy of the movie when it’s released plus some other souvenirs.
In some ways, it’s a little bit like PBS, except for the connection between contribution and content isn’t so direct. A pledge to PBS goes towards, paraphrasing “more great programming like _______, _______ and _______”. In this case, it’s a lot more like user-generated content: the audience is directly driving the broadcast.
So, what does it all mean? I find this fascinating. Have content creators found a new viable business model? Can they bypass the traditional pathways and go direct to the audience?
Of course, Veronica Mars already had an audience, so we’re really just talking about funding production. Does this mean for distribution? And, what does it mean for content brands that don’t already have an audience. I mean, I could go put up The Scott Porad Movie Kickstarter project, and I doubt I’d get $2 million dollars.
Does it mean that proven actors and directors will have enough of an audience to do this? Musicians, certainly, but music production costs so much less than movie and TV production. And, fans don’t relate to actors and directors in the same way that they do to musicians.
I can’t wait see how it turns out. Stay tuned.
P.S. I just checked the Kickstarter page again…they’re up to $1,337,375…about $30k in the 10 minutes it took me to write this post.