'Wish I Was Here' - Zach Braff Kickstarter

Well, you knew it was just a matter of time that someone remotely famous would come out and use the “Veronica Mars” method of crowdsourcing a movie.  There’s been some talks of Kevin Smith exploring these methods in the past and possibly even again with “Clerks 3”, but it turns out that Scrubs’ actor and the writer/director of one of my favorite movies “Garden State”, Zach Braff is the first to jump on this movement as tries to make his new movie “Wish I Was Here.”
This movie is in a lot of ways the spiritual successor to 2004’s “Garden State,” where that was a movie about being in your 20’s this is his take of being in your 30’s.  Ironically enough, that was the same concept Kevin Smith used for Clerks and Clerks 2 respectively, although “Wish I Was Here” is a completely different cast and idea from “Garden State.” 



While Braff had the ability to get this funded by a studio, he chose to let the fans of his work fund it, so he would have complete creative control of the movie and not lose that to a studio.  In his Kickstater video, he tells a very interesting story about getting funding for “Garden State” not from Hollywood, but from a fan of Scrubs who had faith in Zach Braff.  This also allows Braff to have “final cut” of the movie and also cast who he wants in the movie, and if the cameos in the Kickstarter video are any indication it seems plausible that Jim Parsons and Donald Faison could be appearing in one way or another.

Needless to say, I was super excited when I found out about this as I’ve been clamoring for Zach Braff to do another movie as I find him to be a very talented individual and Garden State was just mind-blowingly good. He deserves all the support he can get on this and it is nice to see that he is definitely on pace for making his goal of $2,000,000. Much like the Veronica Mars project, any additional funds will help make the movie better as there are fantasy sequences in this film that will only look cooler with the more money they can raise. Much like all Kickstarter campaigns this has some great perks including a speaking role in the film which went rather quickly. It starts off with the old Production Diary and PDF of the script, then works up to getting streaming access to the film’s soundtrack as well as exclusive playlists that Braff will make during production, which will be cool since Zach’s “Garden State” soundtrack is easily one of the greatest musical compilations in history. At the $30 tier is the ability to watch a live stream of the movie online and Q&A with Braff after it’s done. For $40 you can get an exclusive “soft as kitten taint” t-shirt. From there the perks only get bigger and better as framable artwork, advance film screenings, autographed DVDs and posters, voice and video greetings, a set visit, and your name in the credits are just a few of the many available perks for contributing. So far in just over 8 hours, the movie has done well earning close to $700,000 from over 9,000 backers. Very cool to see and I hope it reaches it’s goal plus more soon as I am eagerly anticipating this. I have included the Kickstarter video here for you to watch and please consider donating here.

Veronica Mars Movie!!!!

This is probably the most exciting thing I’ve seen in a while and has HUGE potential to shake the geek landscape for years to come! 

For those that don’t know Veronica Mars was a show that aired on UPN and The CW from 2004 to 2007, it had a rapid cult following but little more than that.  That really was a damn shame since this was one of my favorite shows of not just this time but all time and I know Anthony feels the same way.  I even showed Julie this little show about a high school girl becoming a detective, which she thought sounded hella-lame at the time and it even made her fall in love with this show.  All three seasons are affordably priced on Amazon, especially seasons 1 and 2 which are going for $12.49 and $11.70 each respectively right now. 

Ever since Veronica Mars ended, the fans, cast and crew of Veronica Mars wanted to do a movie however Warner Bros. which owns the rights to the Veronica Mars series has said no.  And understandably so since cult TV shows being turned into movies hasn’t been proven as a money maker yet.  Brilliantly however, Rob Thomas (Executvie Producer and not the front man for Matchbox Twenty) and Kristen Bell (star of the show) had a brilliant idea, if the people that love the Veronica Mars show and are dying to see another 2 hours of it in movie form want to fund the movie, will Warner Bros. allow this movie to happen?  That answer is yes.

With that the Veronica Mars kickstarter was launched among the masses a few hours ago and has already reached almost $650,000 including some of my very own.  They have lots of cool packages to pick from starting with $10 and getting a digital copy of the script to $10,000 for a speaking role in the movie (Already gone!).  For $25 you get a t-shirt, $35 for a digital version, $50 for a DVD, $75 for a poster, $100 for a Blu-Ray/DVD combo, and a lot more from there.

Anthony and I are tremendous believers in Kickstarter’s potential to do good.  Not only can you fund things that you want to see but also get rewards for helping out the movie in it’s early stages and it’s nice to see things like that this have a ravenous following being able to support something that want to see.  This is such a great time for fandom.  To see something like Veronica Mars be able to pull together it’s followers and make a movie is fantastic.  This is the future.  This is where the new wave of entertainment begins.  Kevin Smith had this same idea with Red State (pre-Kickstarter) and this is the perfect avenue to tell if ideas like these are going to be successful.  I truly believe that this is just the beginning of how your entertainment dollars are going to be spent.  There will always be things like Star Wars and Marvel Comics movies that won’t need Kickstarter.  This is the largest funding campaign in Kickstarter history for a film and if this is successful, this will lead to more things getting the same treatment.

Considering it’s got 29 more days to go and is looking like it’s on track for $2,000,000, but they’ll certainly take more and every little bit helps this movie become bigger and better.  It’s great that we’ll see a Veronica Mars movie in our lives in the very near future (or at least after Kristen has her baby).  You can head on over to their Kickstarter page and help fund this movie right now.  I have included their awesome video from the Kickstarter page here featuring many members of the cast and it makes me want to see this movie even more!