Veronica Mars movie to become reality as fans raise $2 million in less than 24 hours
Fans of cancelled TV series Veronica Mars have raised $2 million to help bring the show about a young private investigator to the big screen.
More than 30,000 people donated money within 24 hours of a “crowd-sourcing” campaign being launched.
“The more money we raise, the cooler movie we can make,” series creator Rob Thomas wrote in his appeal to fans.
Veronica Mars show, starring Kristen Bell as a young sleuth, ended its three-season run in 2007.
The movie project is the fastest to reach $1 million on the Kickstarter site, reaching the figure in four hours and 24 minutes.
According to a spokesman for the website, the project is the most successful so far to have obtained funding through via crowd-sourcing – the practice of raising ideas, services or money via the internet.
Others to have benefited from similar campaigns include animated films The Goon, which raised $442,000, and Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa, for which $406,000 was pledged by fans.
Rob Thomas said he had struck a deal with Warner Bros to make a movie, provided he could raise $2 million by April 12 through the online campaign.
He said the studio had given the project its blessing, having previously declined to fund it after the original TV show was cancelled.
“Their reaction was, if you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board,” Rob Thomas wrote on the film’s donation page.
Fans of cancelled TV series Veronica Mars have raised $2 million to help bring the show to the big screen
Kristen Bell and other cast members will begin production in the summer ahead of a likely limited release in 2014.
“You have banded together like the sassy little honey badgers you are and made this possibility happen,” said Kristen Bell in her own online message, promising fans the “sleuthiest, snarkiest” movie possible.
First broadcast in 2004, Veronica Mars told of a high-school student who moves on to college while moonlighting as a private investigator.
The show averaged between 2.2 million and 2.5 million viewers when it aired on the UPN channel, now defunct, and the CW network.
Backers of the film will receive a variety of rewards for pledging cash, including a copy of the script, to be sent on the day the film is released, and naming rights to a character.
A contributor who donated $10,000 snapped up the opportunity to appear in the film.
Crowd-sourcing has become a way for film-makers, video-game developers and other “creatives” to get funding for projects that can be hard to obtain.
At last month’s Academy Awards, documentary short Inocente, which received $52,000 from 300 contributors, became the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar.
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