"Veronica Mars" is a short-lived television series on UPN that stars Kristin Bell as the high school student turned gritty private investigator in Neptune, California. The series was originally based on a novel written by Rob Thomas about a teen-noir detective set to investigate a fictional California beach town.
Fans of the show formed a loyal base in the same way as termites are loyal to their colony. Blind and stumbling, if they perceive the presence of a hostile force-ants, say or an executive from the CW network-they begin thrashing with their jaws and shooting acid from their heads. It's no surprise, then, that when the show was cancelled after only three seasons, it inspired a great gnashing of teeth and wails for, just maybe, a movie.
Well, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and hundreds of thousands of screaming fans get a project put together at last. The latest news seems to indicate that the fabled "Veronica Mars" movie is a go finally. Life was breathed into the project when the show's original creator, Rob Thomas, took to Kickstarter, of all places, after being rejected for financing by studios. The Internet begged to differ with the gentlemen at Warner Brothers who initially refused to sign off on the deal and responded to Thomas' Kickstarter project the way 4chan deals with members of unpopular religious minorities, that is to say, with a speed and vigor rarely glimpsed.
Thomas' Kickstarter project began with a $2 million target in March of 2013, only to see that goal blown straight past to nearly $3.8 million in the first ten days. The public reaction was so swift, and the stream of money-which is, after all, the coin of the realm in Hollywood-was so free that Warner Brothers has now officially signed on to fund the remainder of the project. Apparently, all it takes to get funding from a major television studio these days is to produce a successful television series, keep it on the air for three seasons-outliving its own parent network, incidentally-and then find over 10,000 crowdsourced backers who will finance the project, thus removing much of the risk on the part of the production company.
The incentive for the fans goes well beyond just seeing their hero on the big screen. Rob Thomas again demonstrated his grasp of what sort of audience he has out there with the reward structure of his Kickstarter project. At the lower levels, there were, of course, all of the little "thank you" you'd expect from a film project: shirts, posters, and the like; but at the higher levels came some serious giveaways, including:
* Above $3,000: A chance to be seen in the film as an extra, milling around in the background
* Above $5,000: The filmmakers will rent out a theater in your town so that the donor, and the donor's fifty closest friends, can enjoy an advance screening of the movie.
* Above $8,000: Name a character in the movie, act in it as a featured extra, and get a boatload of movie swag.
* Above $10,000: Land a speaking role in the film. That's right, for a mere $10,000, one lucky donor will be allowed to dress up as a waiter and hand Veronica and her companion the check in a restaurant. The line will read, "Your check, sir."
In addition to beggaring Rome with the giveaways-the single $10,000 donor spot has been filled, so don't bother-Thomas has also aroused quite a lot of excitement by announcing that Kristen Bell is going to be on board for the film. This is no small matter, since Bell was always acknowledged to be a major part of the reason why the "Veronica Mars" TV show was so popular. Over 500 actresses auditioned for the role of Mars, but Thomas himself picked Bell for what he later described as her "sass."
Well, the trademark sass, and quite a lot of other trademarked intellectual copyrights, is going to be on display at a theater nearby very soon. The film is a go, the deals are being worked out, and actors from the original series are being signed. The shoot is set to take place early in the summer of 2013, with a full release happening sometime near March of 2014. All the loose ends seem to have been tied up, so what could go wrong now?
It's Hollywood-a million things.
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