In this thread about a possible Veronica Mars movie they talk about how over 2 and half million dollars has been raised towards the making of the movie so far using the Kickstarter program. It used to be that backers were promised a certain amount of money or a percentage ofthe profits. Now they get anything from a tee shirt to a walk-on role, meaning more of the profit theoretically goes to the people who actually make the movie, both behind and in front of the camera. What are the pros and cons of this method of money raising? Should the backers gete any monetary benefit?
Rather than investing, I see it more as buying the promo items which typically have a “retail” value greater than the required contribution. So if you’re paying $50 and getting a script, t-shirt, DVD, etc then you’ve been adequately compensated for your fifty bucks. If you pay $8,000 for the experience of eating lunch with Kristen Bell and getting a walk-on extra spot then that’s what you get. While it’s nice to think they’ll be using your eight grand for movie-making, I personally don’t think you have any right to extended considerations than you do when you buy a burger and think now you own .00005% of the burger joint and should start seeing dividends.
Since neither back end or front end moneys go back to the investors, will it take a lot less for a movie to break even? Or will cast and crew twig to what’s going on and eventually demand a bigger cut?
Certainly Kickstarter and Amazon (or whoever processes payments) will do well out of it; they get nearly 10% (combined) of the money raised.
What will be interesting is how the studios react to this. Will they insist that more pictures get crowdfunded rather than studio-produced? Will they take a bigger cut for IP rights? Will a new studio devoted to crowdfunded films spring up? It’s a brave new world…
(And is there any serious talk of a second Firefly movie? With two of the characters gone it just wouldn’t be the same.)
I have trouble envisioning crowdfunding becoming a major player here. Movies are expensive as hell. $2 million is a fairly small budget for a major motion picture, yet it’s the biggest kickstarter of all time. That is already a bad sign. And what did it take? A pre-existing property with a large following, and a cast willing to work for peanuts. It’s essentially a labor of love from both the fans AND creators, and there really aren’t all that many properties that could qualify for that treatment. (and Joss Whedon is behind most of them.)
Honestly, how many franchises are out there with A) large fanbases B) creators willing to revisit them and C) no current financial backing? A dozen, tops? This is not going to become the norm, although it will happen from time to time.
A lot will also depend on how successful this film is. If the box office is sluggish, there will be little incentive for others to try the same route. If it grosses high, Kickstarter will be flooded with wannabes.
It strikes me as small potatoes. I can’t see them ever raising a significant amount of money…unless it’s $100 million to strangle Jar Jar Binks
With the exception of the 20 or so high level donors these people just paid for their DVD copy of the movie early. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable way to fund the movie at all, and if they’d allowed participation from outside the US I would already be on the list.
It’s been used for smaller movies is the past and the same theory applies to movies through kickstarter as other projects - they’re turning the traditional revenue stream around.
People often say they’re interested in something but have moved on by the time R&D and production have completed. This allows companies to collect when the interest level is high and use the money to speed development and production.
There is risk with kickstarter - projects can fully fund and then fail but I’ve been lucky enough to not encounter one of those yet.
$2 million isn’t even close to being the biggest Kickstarter of all.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/posts
It may end up as the biggest Kickstarter of all (in fact, I’m betting on it), but Kickstarter can attract a lot of backers if the project is right. In fact, I think Serenity 2 could pull down $10 million in a single day.
It’s going to be one way of financing a film, especially a low-budget one, it will be like Spike Lee maxing out his credit cards to get his first movie made – an occasional occurrence, but not anything that happens regularly.
Very few film projects have the name recognition of Veronica Mars.
Oh, interesting. One article I saw reported that it was the biggest, and I didn’t think to verify that.
It was the record-breaker in getting to (IIRC) $1 million, hitting that in 4 hours. However, only a week ago, the previous record was set at about 7 hours for a computer game Kickstarter, for a small company’s “spiritual sequel” to the RPG Planescape: Torment.
I don’t see Kickstarter or any other crowdfunding site as a viable mechanism for funding any major motion pictures; as stated above, there’s just too much money involved. However, someone who’s raised a few million in preorders doesn’t have to argue that there’s interest in the movie, because it’s self-evident. I think what we’ll see is the studios relying less on their current mechanisms for picking which movies to fund, and more on throwing all the ideas out to the public and seeing what sells.
I think what was meant was not that they’d raised the most money, but that they’d asked for the most money. The Pebble Watch only asked for $100,000.
I’ve seen goals for over a million, but I think this is the first two million.
I guess, but I’m not sure having a fanbase with strong interest translates to a profitable movie. 46,000 people have donated to the Veronica Mars thing, but that’s not actually that many people for a film audience. If they all go, bring a date, and buy a ten dollar movie ticket, that’s still less then a million dollars of revenue.
Similarily, there was a huge passionate fan base for a Firefly movie. I’m sure if Kickstarter had been a thing back then, they could’ve raised several million. But the actual audience numbers never went much beyond that passionate base of fans, and the film barely made its money back.
I suspect to the extent we see Kickstarter campaigns in the future, they’ll just be part of viral marketing campaigns for films the studios have already pretty much decided to make, rather then convincing studios to make certain flims or being a serious source of funding.
When i kickstart a videogame i get a copy of the game if it comes out at the bare minimum, do you get free movie tickets for kickstarting a movie?
Firefly’s fandom has grown by leaps and bounds thanks to DVDs and repeated airings on cable. A movie today would do better than a movie released in 2005 which did better than the television show it was spawned from.
A Firefly Kickstarter would likely be so successful as to break Kickstarter for a bit.
Did you not read the thread or click on the Kickstarter link? The answer is yes.
I think it’s great for small-time indie productions. The third movie in the “The Gamers” series was funded through Kickstarter (and is going to be freely available for download once it’s finished, I heard). Without it, the movie may not have been made.
The third “Gamers” movie? I can’t wait!
The only “serious” talk I’ve heard is that Joss was/is interested in floating a new film or series in the Firefly 'verse, but it wouldn’t have any of the Firefly characters (except as cameos or walk-bys) and wouldn’t be a sequel/prequel focused on that lot of people and their character arcs. I think he’s pretty satisfied with the way their journeys got told in graphic novel format.
IF that’s the case, then a lot of the Firefly fans wouldn’t be super-invested. I don’t think they’d shun him, but most people want to follow the stories of the Firefly crew - not meet brand-new people in that universe. That said, while I personally greatly miss seeing more of Mal et al, I do love the concept and feel of the 'verse, and think it would be a great setting for different stories.