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OFFICIAL Veronica Mars (the movie) kickstarter
- Thread starter grumpy
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It's not, but one can dream.You're kidding me. Game of Thrones is unpopular on GAF?
This is shocking
Man I am the same way. As much as I enjoy talking about TV on GAF, there are a few threads I don't even bother with. The ones that are small but not too small seem to be the best.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Yup. People that love the show, but also don't mind constructive criticism. The Doctor Who thread is a good example of being balanced.
RobotMafia
Banned
I'm shocked to see people defending Dax Sheapard in this thread. He is a terrible, terrible actor who only has had one good role when he played himself in Idiocracy.
VeryGooster
Banned
Mad Men threads are fun times.
I'm assuming you haven't seen Parenthood.
brucewaynegretzky
Member
Yeah... like Party Down... or Better Off Ted... or Reapers... or Studio 60.... or Young Justice
Damnit... I'm never going to get what I want, am I?
EDIT: And Alphas! And Sanctuary!
I think he is great in Patenthood. Surprised me when I started watching it.
I think the major problem with these rivals is that they require the cast to be reunited. What if Kristen Bell gets a 10 million dollar payday to be in the next Star Wars movie, but filming conflicts with Veronica Mars? Even if she's signed a contract to be in Veronica Mars, she can just say "Fuck it", deal with a breach of contract lawsuit and the project dies. What if the project gets 10 million dollars and all of a sudden the actors demand a bigger payday?
At that point the project might die, and there's not really an infrastructure in place to refund all the backers. I presume that Amazon/Kickstarter would probably not be willing to refund their cut of the money either, so that would leave Rob Thomas on the hook to cover their cut in refunds.
At that point the project might die, and there's not really an infrastructure in place to refund all the backers. I presume that Amazon/Kickstarter would probably not be willing to refund their cut of the money either, so that would leave Rob Thomas on the hook to cover their cut in refunds.
That she's willing to do this movie for very little pay (if they got just two million, much of the cost would be covered by the makers), would seem to indicate she's invested in the movie beyond it just being a job.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
This is another really good point. Your negotiation skills have got to be really on point. Basically, you'd better have agreements with EVERY fucking actor in the cast before the Kickstarter is even approached, because it's all to easy to envision a scenario where someone just ASSUMES something, the Kickstarter rolls out, and then one of the actors who you thought would just agree to work scale for the love of it decides to hold the whole fucking thing hostage for a larger chunk of the money that's pouring out of this fan faucet.
Sure, you could just write that guy out. But now your project doesn't look as solid as it did, and now your project has to change, and now a scripts gotta be rewritten and suddenly shit is a lot shakier than it was when you turned the tap on that faucet.
All sorts of potential problems.
It appears Thomas made sure to cover those bases, which is pretty slick.
Sure, you could just write that guy out. But now your project doesn't look as solid as it did, and now your project has to change, and now a scripts gotta be rewritten and suddenly shit is a lot shakier than it was when you turned the tap on that faucet.
All sorts of potential problems.
It appears Thomas made sure to cover those bases, which is pretty slick.
BlastProcessing
Member
Kickstarter terms say that there is no liability if a project fails. No one is getting their money back no matter what.
I'm just using it as an example really and I'm not meaning to cast doubt on her commitment specifically. I could have asked "What if one of the principal actors in a series revived on Kickstarter gets a better offer from somewhere else and decides to quit?" But I figured I'd just make up a hypothetical situation using Veronica Mars.
These projects are somewhat unique in that they can completely fall apart if one of the principal actors refuses to participate. Tim Schafer could quit DoubleFine tomorrow and they could still make their Kickstarter game. A TV series revival cannot really be recast without massive outrage.
I would probably give to ANY TV revival out of principle, honestly. But I'd definitely give big to Terriers, Better off Ted, Enlightened, and Happy Endings.
That's why whatever you shoot needs to be locked in. The top of the call sheets needs to be locked in ASAP by the studio and filming has to be set in stone so no one's schedules get effed up. It's hard, but it's doable. Especially if the cast wants it to happen.
I have to imagine that that this point they've all signed contracts that are contingent on the Kickstarter's success. But even a signed contract isn't a guarantee. The actor might get sick or die or just get a better offer from somewhere else.
I suspect that actors working for studio-backed projects will not renege on the deal because doing that will probably get you blacklisted in Hollywood. But there will probably be revivals with very limited or no studio involvement. And at that point you can breach your contract and it wouldn't much matter. Yeah, you've burned the production company and you've burned 30,000 people on Kickstarter, but your relationship with Warner Brothers/Disney/whoever is still solid.
What they say is that you are expected to issue refunds if you cannot deliver the final product, but to my knowledge they have no legal way in place to enforce this policy. What I don't know is if they are willing to give back their 5% cut if the project creator is willing and able to issue refunds. I doubt Amazon would give back their cut either.
Well, this has clearly been planned for a long time, given the pitch video was filmed before Bell's pregnancy. They've obviously gotten the cast together and gotten all legal things sorted out in advance, and I presume the story is written, even if the script isn't yet.
So, basically, if any creators see this Kickstarter and think about their own cancelled shows, this is impressive, but they ought to think long and hard on any Kickstarter they might do. Any rushed or sudden Kickstarter is be in danger of falling apart even if it does get funded. They should do everything this one did, get everyone important to the film on board early on, have your plan for the film, hell be right ready to make the film once you get the money you need.
I don't want to see a sudden movie Kickstarter next month inspired by this. There's no way it could be planned enough to work out. For instance, Terriers is not going to have the same hungry fanbase WM does, so its goal should be quite a lot lower than 2 million, but then that limits the film's budget a lot if it only gets to that goal and not much further. Never mind that it must be certain this is the only way to get it made. VM has been pitched as a movie since 2007, it's clear it was never going to be made without crowdfunding like this. Whereas if Joss Whedon got the rights to Firefly back, I could see him (if he wanted to) getting a greenlight on a new season funded by Disney, since his Marvel success will have given him cred with them.
Games are one thing, they tend to just get made once you have the funding, the talent to make them, and can set your own release dates. The budgets just go into salaries there. Movies are a shit load more expensive for one, but they require a lot more, well "movement" than games (which have been the stars of Kickstarter so far), more than just desigers and programmers. So like I said, the Kickstarter should only come when you have the cast on board, a schedule for shooting if you get funded, the outline if not the script already done, the works. Kickstarter shouldn't be used to fund development of a movie, ever, it should be used to fund the full production and filming.
SlowRevolution
Member
It's getting close to 2.5 million. At 2,470,000 now.
I still think that this was more a publicity stunt and an opportunity to excite and invigorate fans than it was a project that really required Kickstarter assistance. If Warner Brothers was willing to cough up a few million bucks to cover post-production, marketing, distribution, etc, would they really would have balked at covering a few more million for actual production costs? This project would have happened one way or another, but Rob Thomas saw Kickstarter as an opportunity to get a bigger budget and more creative freedom than he would have had in a project that was strictly studio-backed. This doesn't necessarily bother me though, and I do believe that fan involvement will probably result in a better final product.
I'm sure this whole taffair will be covered quite extensively in the entertainment media, and I'm quite interested to hear what the actual final budget will be after the investment of Warner/Thomas/Bell is added into it. I imagine the Kickstarter money will probably be half of the budget at best.
I'm sure this whole taffair will be covered quite extensively in the entertainment media, and I'm quite interested to hear what the actual final budget will be after the investment of Warner/Thomas/Bell is added into it. I imagine the Kickstarter money will probably be half of the budget at best.
inanutshell
Member
Yeah. They're giving out actual t-shirts at the $25 level tier so they're probably not getting a whole lot of actual funding there. I think the kickstarter was more to gauge interest and generate publicity.
systemfehler
Member
2 million $ seem to be so little for a movie. However I just looked at imdb.com and in the independent movie Hit and Run (Bell, Shepard, ...) they also only had 2 million $ and it turned out quite well as far as I have heard. Although they had to use 50% of the money to secure music rights - that sounds pretty high to me.
Noooooooooooo! I just started watching this show (worse LTTP ever). Tell me this is a typo...? ;_;
SlickShoesRUCrazy
Member
Kristen Bell <3
Not a blonde type of guy, but damn is she cute.
Not a blonde type of guy, but damn is she cute.
What was the cost per episode?
They'd essentially just be shooting two. I can't imagine they had more than $750K per episode, right? It was on the UPN...
Anyway, this is so exciting. I love the way it ended, but I'm totally up for more. I wonder if they'll follow the season 4 that wasn't to be's plot. Get Walton Goggin's on the phone!
They'd essentially just be shooting two. I can't imagine they had more than $750K per episode, right? It was on the UPN...
Anyway, this is so exciting. I love the way it ended, but I'm totally up for more. I wonder if they'll follow the season 4 that wasn't to be's plot. Get Walton Goggin's on the phone!
Yeah, what's the actual production cost of a single t-shirt, assuming that you can do a run of 60,00-80,000 shirts, and that the shirt design is nothing more than a single color logo? I gotta imagine that cuts into the lower-tier donations pretty hard.
People (me included) always tend to forget that the actual budget of a project is the total donations minus the Kickstarter/Amazon cut MINUS the cost of fulfilling all the rewards. I guess it helps that all the high-tier rewards are relatively low-cost stuff -- even having a couple extra people at the premiere/afterparty is not really going to be that expensive. And I think they've pretty much said that they aren't going to fly you out to the premiere or out to the set to be an extra, so people in those tiers assume costs that will not eat into their donations.
StopMakingSense
Member
1.7 million per ep for season 2.
Happy Endings isn't dead yet but its chances are not good.
Somebody else in the thread also assumed that they would follow the story of the aborted 4th Season. I'm not sure why though, since it was pretty clear that they put Veronica in the FBI only because they could then pitch the show as a procedural/crime-of-the-week drama that would be more appealing to executives than a serialized college mystery show. It was a pretty blatant betrayal of the show's original vision, and I'm glad it didn't happen. I have to imagine that's not what Rob Thomas wanted either, but he just tried to assemble a package that was most likely make a fourth season get greenlighted.
Their description in the Kickstarter page makes it pretty clear that they have something much different in mind:
Life has taken Veronica away from Neptune. In the years since spoiling Keith's chances to be reelected sheriff, Veronica hasn't taken a case. But something big is about to bring her back home and back to her calling. My goal is to include as many of your favorite characters as possible. It is, after all, time for Veronica’s 10-year high school reunion.
Veronica can't be in the FBI if she hasn't taken a case in years. I'm actually pretty curious what she's been doing for the past 10 years. It'd be totally boring to have her show up as a seasoned FBI investigator.....better to have her show up rusty and uncertain. My guess is that she will be solving the murder of whichever character/actor they cannot get to return for the reunion movie
Either that or she will be solving the murder of her mom (I never watched the back end of Season 3, so if her mom dies there please don't tell me).It's chances are better than what TVBTN might believe, but that's for another thread.
To answer your question, it's a long shot to come back on ABC. Less of a long shot to appear somewhere else like MTV or Amazon. Still, I would fund a lot.
I'm also interested to see how all the personalized video messages from Kristen Bell will turn out. She obviously won't record anything explicit, but I'm sure a few goofballs will try to abuse the opportunity. They'll have her record something that is secretly explicit, or have her record an advertisement for their website, Twitter feed, or local business. I'm kinda curious what their response will be to suggested scripts that read "Come on down to Lola's Crab Shack on Route 13 - they've got the best crab cakes in all of Broward County!" Or something that's weirdly suggestive - "I want your fire hose rammed into my hydrant!" I can imagine a place like 4Chan getting her to say something that's only dirty when viewed in the context of a popular internet meme.
Is this the first time that a major celebrity has offered to perform/record (almost) whatever you want for a nominal fee?
Is this the first time that a major celebrity has offered to perform/record (almost) whatever you want for a nominal fee?
Checked the first few pages, if anybody is interested in catching up to the series..3 seasons are available for streaming on The WB page. Good to have on the 2nd monitor
http://www.thewb.com/shows/veronica-mars/pilot/3c62044675
http://www.thewb.com/shows/veronica-mars/pilot/3c62044675
Kristen - put shoe on head
I'm not sure what they can really do to keep their momentum going. They can say stuff like "Oh donate another 500K and we can have on-location shoots instead shooting sets on a soundstage", but I don't think most people really appreciate the difference between things filmed on location instead of things shot on a studio backlot.
Yeah, i don't think they can do that kind of goals.
They could do something goofy, though: daily behind the scenes video updates during the shooting or make actors do a commentary as their characters. And obviously they should include more high priced pledges, because they are absolutely gone. The biggest donation you can do now is 400 bucks, and that's limited too! It's madness.
SlowRevolution
Member
Kristen Bell takes off a piece of clothing for every million raised. She'd be shoeless by now.
Memento Mori
Member
You can donate if you're outside the US, you just can't get most of the rewards.
They'd never do it in a million years, but if they promised a Kristen Bell nude/topless scene as a 10 million dollar stretch goal, I wonder if they would make it. It'd be a horrible choice for the movie and not fit at all with the tone and style of the TV series, but it could still totally work to bring in extra money.
Discotheque
Banned
You're kidding me. Game of Thrones is unpopular on GAF?
This is shocking
you're quoting a delusional dude who cries everytime anyone throws any valid criticism to the show. it's very popular on gaf. though i think the most popular show on gaf is piece of crap walking dead.
anyways join spartacus and arrow gaf and get swole brah
They were gone within 4 hours :lol
VARIETY - $2 Million for 'Veronica Mars' Breaks Kickstarter Records, Gets Greenlight
Also, Kevin Williamson's (Dawson's Creek) pitch:
lolz
Also, Kevin Williamson's (Dawson's Creek) pitch:
lolz
Something tells me you'd watch anything with Manu Bennett in it, just a feeling I have.
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