A couple weeks ago, fans of the 2004 TV show Veronica Mars managed to rally together and raise two million dollars in less than 12 hours for a revival movie that is scheduled to be made in the summer of 2013 and have a limited release in the first three months of 2014.
The original TV show, which ran from 2004 to 2007, focused on teenage private investigator Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell), who has to balance being a high school (and later college) student with solving mysteries in the fictional town of Neptune, Calif.
Supporting her sleuthing are Neptune High basketball star Wallace Fennel (Percy Daggs III), Eli “Weevil” Navarro (Francis Capra), who is the leader of a local bike gang and genius hacker Cindy “Mac” Mackenzie (Tina Majorino). Veronica’s life is further complicated by her relationship with her murdered best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring).
After the show was canceled, creator Rob Thomas wrote a film script that was intended to tie up the loose ends left after the third season of Veronica Mars, but he did not receive enough funding to produce the movie, putting the entire project on hold.
Earlier this month, though, Bell and Thomas launched a campaign to raise money for a Veronica Mars film through Kickstarter, which is a company that helps with gathering funds from the public for a variety of creative projects and endeavors.
Although the goal was to raise two million dollars by April 12, within 12 hours of the Kickstarter page being posted, fans had already managed to exceed that amount.
As of March 27, a total of about 61,200 fans have raised over four million dollars for this project. With there being 12 days left until the deadline, it is possible for the total amount raised to be over three million more than originally intended by Thomas and Mars.
In the description of the of the proposed Veronica Mars movie, Thomas says that in the years since audiences last saw Veronica, she has left the little town of Neptune and has stopped sleuthing. However, he foreshadows that “something big” is going to take her back to her hometown and reunite her with her old classmates just in time for her 10-year high school reunion.
Thomas plans on including as many fan favorite characters from the television show as possible in the movie, as this is really a movie for the long-time fans who want to know what happened to all the characters after the show was abruptly canceled in 2007.
The success of this fundraiser paves the way for other shows canceled before their time to be revived in movie format in the future.
However, gathering funds is only the first step in the journey to making a movie revival. Actors must be on board and the network must be willing to support the project.
Still, the success of Veronica Mars in this endeavor means that the future is bright for other possible revivals.
